Looking at Channel 4's line-up tonight, perhaps this is another "Inconvenient Truth", Ruth, but if I was, in your words, "xenophobic", would I have travelled through, and written so many positive verses about, some 40 or so countries? And, okay, it's not impossible to get funding for English-culture projects, of course, but there would be few other countries whose own culture, over the last 50 years, has been demoted to the extent of English culture; and, it seems to me, New Labour (for some reason?) have stepped that sad process up a gear. (Tony Blair, "We don't want a return of English nationalism.") And, although they may not agree with me on everything, Show of Hands were moved to pen a song about it.
Now, as for "authenticity", George, for hundreds of years, English folk music, at least, WAS the (largely-dispassionate) repitiion of a relatively simple melody for dancing and/or telling; thus, if folks now are doing something like that, they are being reasonably "authentic" with their performance - agreed?