but then Folk survived the industrial revolution

The concept of folk / folklore post-dates the Industrial Revolution by some years, so - er - not quite! Folk is still in its infantile neo-logistic state being bandied about with various degrees of authority as it vainly searches for a meaning. The pragmatics of the case are obvious enough, in terms of its - er - Meta-Folk Usage. One chap up here once wrote a song and introduced it in our local club with the zen-like : "This isn't a rock 'n' roll song, but a folk song about rock 'n' roll". This sums it up quite neatly & reflects the pragmatics of the case perfectly. Likewise Peter Bellamy, whose own Folk Usage was utterly idiomatic as evidenced by pretty much everything he did, right down to coming up with a better tune to do justice to his theme song of latter years (On Board a '98). Even his Kipling-Folk thesis, which only really worked when he used tunes that he wrote himself.

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The collected evidence of Traditional Song is, for sure, overwhelming - but evidence for what? The unnatural selection process notwithstanding, it's all a testimony to ordinary honest to goodness popular music making which was no different then to how it is now or, indeed, at any other point on Planet Earth in the 50,000 year tradition of human music making. Idiomatically diverse, and then some, but music is music is music, just as people are people are people. The whole concept of Folk is born from noxious apartheid directly echoing that of the English class-caste system that defines it even unto this day. These 1954 Folkers in their snooty imperialistic fundamentalism remind me of Creationists who see in the strata of billions of years evidence of Noah's Flood of but a few thousand. It appreciates the stars as astrology rather than astronomy.

Folk is not so much a matter of definition, but a matter of personal faith. Where there is righteousness, let there be heresy! Where there is order, let there be chaos! Where there is prissy folk dancing let there be mighty raving and rioting! Happily, in the real world, that's exactly how it is. Human Creativity thrives whilst Folkies turn their backs on the real world in dread the life they're all wearied for in their po-face pedantic piety.