>There will always be purists that mourn that transition,
>but they are, as you say, clinging to relatively unrealistic
>standards that no longer reflect a given place and time.
>

When is there a need to redefine-as opposed to expand (big principal difference to me; an expansion still comes from within, a redefinition is primarily necessary when "outside" elements that are often even mutually exclusive to the aesthetics of the original are brought in) the definition of a genre? I would say such a thing is necessary when a bunch of artists associated with a genre concurrently move towards a different, new sound. Examples would be the changes in sound in soul between the 60's and 70's or funk throughout the 70's. There's no need to come up with new genre-names in those cases since the prominent examples of earlier definitions all moved on.

However, this "new" generation of "indie-folk" is not like that at all and neither is most nu-metal or a bunch of other things.

If a genre is nothing but an imposed framework-which I agree with-what exactly is the point of redefining it? And what does genre-polices have to do with anything? It's a common mistake to believe that purists don't want innovation and blah-blah; being purist simply mean that your framework for what constitutes a certain genre is more rigid, it has nothing to do with musical narrow-mindedness. Believing it does actually implies that a genre is more than an imposed framework IMO...