There seems to me to be a degree of cross-purposes in these exchanges. Jim favours a particular interpretation of the term "folk music". BH et al seem to be immoderately denouncing him for not accepting their gloss on his interpretation, constantly asserting that he has got to accept their emendations of and extensions to his understanding of the term to include elements which he doesn't feel to be part of the discourse to which he is referring.

Why should he? It's simply begging the question to assure him that the meaning has changed [with the implication that for some unspecified reason change=progress], so he'd just better adjust. Why not try to take his points on board, instead of sticking so pertinaciously to their own glosses as being somehow definitive?

≈M≈