The person at the top of the list stating that Bob Dylan is NOT a folk singer would be Dylan himself. Anyone who classifies Bob Dylan as a folk singer is clearly not a fan of Bob Dylan. The very thing that came out of his music, that time, is that labels are damning and restrictive.
The last time I saw Dylan (of the dozen or more times I've seen him), he came out in Johnny Cash black attire and lit into set after set. I watched the faces on the crowd in the Atlantic City room. Rick Nelson's Garden Party echoed in my head. As I looked at the faces of the people, I heard Nelson's words: "They didn't hear the music. We didn't look the same."
During that concert, Bob was on a country binge...not Wilbury, not renegade, not railing, just some pure country. Seriously not my cup of tea, but as a fan of Dylan, I loved it. He can pull it all off. The only other artist who falls into that genre is Paul Simon. By the end of the night, Dylan had played two songs, one of them "I Shall Be Released" which I'm positive no one recognized.
My first Dylan concert came after years of reading his writings and hearing what the outside world deems as folk music. He was surrounded by what I call "do whop" girls or his version of Ray Charles' Rayettes. He was going through is Born-again-Bob phase.
That is the beauty of the body of music that belongs to Dylan. It transcends genres. He uses his music to speak to stages in his life. He's no different than the rest of us-except that he has this wonderful talent for putting into words what so many of us are thinking as we go through those changes in our lives.
Folk music is certainly a facet, a huge facet. People were annoyed during his 60 Minutes interview in which Ed Bradley asked him if he would be capable of writing Blowin' in the Wind Again. He said he really didn't think so. People were devatstated. Why? They called him the voice of a generation. Again, that's a label WE gave him, not one he wears well. And from a personal standpoint, I think of him as the voice of a generation-or at least me-the ever-changing me. As I've gone through stages my life, I've found a Dylan song to correspond. As a teen, Masters of War fit, as did Positively Fourth Street. During the Born-again Bob stage, I was in my 20s, and I had lots of question. Gotta Serve Somebody fit the bill. Now I'm coming back to a classic as I'm approaching 50-"I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Dylan fan, folk fan, whatever, I know a lot of people my age who relate to this sentiment.
He's a man of music. Good music. You can't/shouldn't label music. You either like it or you don't. You don't need to call it something. That's for the money makers who produce the music, not the artists who create it.
All that said, there is one thing Bob Dylan is that he has never been recognized for: a poet. When the Nobel committee convenes, Dylan's name comes up again and again. Still, they stay what he does are lyrics, so don't qualify. I would argue that the words Bob Dylan has written had moved more people than the poets given the Nobel prize. So, folk singer, no, poet/writer extroidinaire, yes.