One thing we can all agree on is that folk songs, whatever their origins, persisted in oral performance and helped shape a tradition. Nobody, I hope, will try to argue that prospect is likely to apply to the typical, instantly forgettable singer-songwriter effusion from the last decades of pop music.

Besides that, we no longer live in the cultural circumstances that made folk music -- not called that, of course, by those who sang or played it -- a part of ordinary life. Unless folk music is redefined as any music people, as opposed to horses, enjoy.