I love your trail of thought, Greg, and find it hard to refute. But of course, arrived at logically, the answer shocks. Which proves that the question was wrong in the first place.

I argue that nobody can define "Folk", for the simple reason that it is not a single thing, but a collection of varied influences, sounds, experiences, lives etc, and organic whole growing as we speak but consisting of independent and distinct organisms; sort of like a colony. To provide a single defining answer you'd have to ignore so many of the differences that the answer doesn't make sense. It's like asking "Who defines human" - would it be a hermaphrodite? I think not.

So, folk is by definition indefineable.