Back in the day when we wore flares and were long haired scruffy gits,the hit parade had numerous "folk" contributions by such as the
Strawbs, Pentangle, Donovan, Steeleye Span etc etc.... I think for many this coloured our definition of folk. This can be argued back and forth by the purists for ever and will progress the theme not one iota. I fail to see what place sessions have in this particular thread. If you want to discuss the ins and outs of sessions go elsewhere. It is obvious there will be no agreement as to what constitutes folk so further banging the drum for each viewpoint is fairly pointless. I suspect the majority describe folk music with a far broader paintbrush than the purists and although I will concede a debt is due to Jim for collating , archiving and researching material, this does not give him any right to dictate his interpretation of folk music on the rest of us. He is vastly outnumbered judging by the contributions here.
If you take the purist view then folk music is as dead as monty pythons pet parrot, and people are endlessly performing with a corpse.
I prefer to believe the genre is alive and kicking and modes of generation and transmittal reflect the world we live in today, not that of 200 year old yokels..