Labels are handy, but they get extended and distorted over time. It's happened with "Folk music" and its happening with "World Music", as also with "Roots Music", or "Jazz" or "Country". Or "Classical" for that matter.

Sometimes people playing or enjoying a particular kind of music want the label because they see it as helpful in getting people to listen to it; sometimes it's the other way round. That's why new labels get invented that overlap with the old, but don't coincide with them.

It can't be helped. The thing to remember is that labels are a kind of map, and "the map is not the territory".

"Traditional Music" is a pretty good label, because it's more resistant than most to this process, and implicitly recignises that there are a lot of different traditions in different parts of the world. (Where it falls down is maybe when it's taken to suggest that there is a single tradition in particular countries or regions, and that's rarely true, especially over time, and when its used as a way of trying to invalidate music from different traditions, or changes in tradition.)

I'm pleased to see that this pretty interesting thread has grown out of that rather addled opening post with its "white middle class fraud" posturing. I like it when Mudcatters can do that, because all too often we don't.