"scholars today are receptive to the many ways performers and audiences conceptualize what they (performers and audiences) call "Folk,"
Then we need to know how they have incorporated their receptiveness into a new definition - so far nothing.
"And at the same time non-scholars are using the word in whatever way suits them"
My pont exactly - nothing to do with the music itself - rather a justification of taking over a name and a venue to provide a platform and an audience for something entirely different.
Not only has this endangered the future and the proliferation of folk song proper, but it led to 'folk' being a meaningless term with no tangible definition outside the established one
Even this has become extremely difficult to discuss rationally and calmly thanks to a heavy gang of 'folk police' telling those of us who wish to that we shouldn't be - "troll" has just been added to the invective on one of the other threads - "finger-in-ear" and "purist" - (not forgetting "folk police" of course) being old and hackneyed long-standing ones.
Jim Carroll