Ralph Jaccodine management

Over the last decade in particular, musical styles have become harder to pin down, partially because artists increasingly dabble in multiple sounds, and partially because some music critics invent subgenres for sport (guilty). Perhaps the only style that’s remotely immune to these blurred lines and overlap is the people’s music — that is, the vast umbrella of folk.

Panelists will delve into the genre’s local history this Saturday at “Wasn’t That a Time: The Boston Folk Revival 1958-1965,” a symposium presented by Boston’s Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in partnership with the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music. The all-day event at Arrow Street Arts in Cambridge largely focuses on the area’s pivotal role in 20th-century folk music, and will feature guest appearances from Peter Wolf, Anna Canoni (Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter), and keynote speaker Noel Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul and Mary.

Among these interlocking pieces of music history, the most essential topic might be the one that’s not well-tread: the symposium’s finale, a discussion examining the trajectory of “post-revival folk.” To get a glimpse at the genre’s present and future, panelists say to look at the musicians perfecting their pickin’ in Boston — and how they’re picking to protest.

“This [folk] wasn’t a time capsule that we can look back and say, ‘oh yeah, that was great and then it stopped’ — it evolved, and it’s still evolving,” says panelist Deana McCloud, founding executive director of the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, and a curator at the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame. “Hip-hop is folk, punk is folk.”

McCloud notes that institutions like Passim are already leading the way in broadening the public’s view of folk music through the Folk Collective, a rotating cohort of creatives working to diversify the historic club’s programming. Since the cohort’s debut in 2023, it’s launched events like We Black Folk Fest, a showcase of Black musicians that strives to expand guests’ often-whitewashed notions about folk and its origins.

Outside of intimate listening rooms like Passim, the genre’s past and present merge at raucous punk outings from Dropkick Murphys, who have recorded two albums with unused Woody Guthrie lyrics, including 2022’s “This Machine Still Kills Fascists” (a tweaked version of the slogan that Guthrie famously wrote on an acoustic guitar).

“The music doesn’t die because somebody else, somebody is no longer here physically,” adds panelist Ralph Jaccodine, a Berklee professor with a decades-honed background in artist management. He cites the Dropkicks’ use of Guthrie lyrics as a prime example of folk’s ethos permeating styles like punk, although in his classrooms, he says there’s no shortage of interest in straight-ahead roots and Americana music.

As Berklee’s American Roots Music program swells, Jaccodine notes a “resurgence” of interest in the genre’s more acoustic roots, in part because students are unplugging and distancing themselves from AI-generated art.

“While this [genre] is getting attention — the Molly Tuttles of the world, people playing mandolin and banjo — we have AI coming out,” Jaccodine says, noting the array of technology available to musicians. “I feel like there is a change to more simple times, to more acoustic times.”

Regrettably, music created by AI has the potential to go viral just as quickly as “real” tunes. Look at the Velvet Sundown, a phony band who managed to garner 1.4 million monthly Spotify listeners in less than two months earlier this year. Since it was exposed as AI, interest in the group has plummeted, but not everyone has tuned out; the group still boasts approximately 295,000 monthly listeners on the platform.

Call it a new chapter for folk: “the people’s music” has officially evolved from “music created by anyone, regardless of training or background” to “music created by anyone with a soul and a pulse.”