> the person who writes his or her own songs and wants to "legitimize" their songs by claiming they are "folk."

True, but what is there about the product that "legitimizes" it? People either like or don't like other music, without musicians/publicists needing to "legitimize" it (or themselves).

> about to 'drag English Folk Music kicking and screaming into the 21st century'

If it's got to be "dragged" or "reinvigorated," then it must be pretty bad, or at least unpopular. I don't see why a musician would want to associate herself with music that's supposed to be so tedious and antiquated that it needs to be morphed into something entirely different.

Anyway, Joseph Taylor's music isn't being morphed. It's being ignored or (perhaps) used in a vague way as inspiration, much as movies that are 95% fiction marketed as "Inspired by true events."

I can understand why people would want to watch "true" events. But I can't understand why people who would be bored to tears by actual folk/traditional music performed a by an actual traditional musician, *like* to think that some utterly different contemporary music really "is" what the stuff they dislike apparently "isn't."

Maybe it's just a fake, industry-induced "nostalgia" for a distorted past that's so romanticized and plain miscomprehended that its music *must* have sounded like what the "folk" audience wants to hear now.

Offhand I can't imagine any other reason for marketing it as "folk." As I said before, why not "light jazz" or "New Age" or something like that?

On the other hand, "folk traditions" and the past are usually absent from the modern music we're talking about - except when some simplistic history is invoked in protest songs.

Even "folk-rock" would make a wee bit more sense: but perhaps today "folk" is just an abbreviation for "folk-rock."