"By the way Mr Carroll, my interpretation of folk is backed up by being me and nothing else, a bit like yourself"
Er - no
My interpretation is fully backed by over a century of research, long established, definitions - (pre-dating '54 by over a century), a common usage that has never been challenged by a replacement definition and reams of international literature.
Yours appears to be a personal one, not necessarily agreed by people who do not accept the established one but who neither have the knowledge or interest to agree among themselves enough to come up with I new one.
"Folk is what I say it is" is not a definition.
You done even have the good grace to acknowledge the damage that has been done to an established people's culture.
What has happened on the British scene is 'acculturation' - the destruction of one cultural form by other forms.
Forty odd years ago, when we first started researching in Ireland, we were recording from a dying culture.
Traditional music was on the wane - totally ignored or despised by the establishment and the media (as "diddly-di music") and on the way out, pretty much as it is in Britain now.
A handful of enthusiasts, took the situation and turned it around completely.
Since then, many thousands of young people have flocked to Irish music, taken up the instruments and the tunes, learned from the handful of older musicians that were still around, or their recordings and have guaranteed at least a three-generation future to our Folk arts.
In this one street town on the West Coast I can go out from four to seven nights a week (depending on the time of year) and hear excellent music played by musicians ranging in ages from early teens to octogenarians.
I can switch the radio on any night of the week and listen to traditional music and song, the same to a lesser degree with the the television where filmed sessions of traditions performers are regularly featured alongside academic discussion and documentaries - last week a documentary on Sarah Makem, this week on Elizabeth Cronin - the interviewee was a beatifully talented singer, I would guess in her early twenties.
Song has some way to go to catching up with the music scene, but it's getting there.
None of this has been achieved by not knowing our folk arse from its elbow.
Perhaps you might come back when you have a workable definition to replace the existing one.
So far, you have only produced a hostile takeover.
Jim Carroll