I don't really know how to explain it but I feel like the definitive modern american folk song is Ohio by Neil Young, like it acts as a kind of oral history and a reminder of what has happened. It has a working class and anti government feel, It's a telling of a real and tragic event that has been turned into both a song and a story.
What I’m trying to say is if a traveling bard performed it on his Banjo in the apocalypse alongside stuff like House of the Rising Sun and This land is your land, I don’t think anyone would bat an eye