"So, Howard Jones, black American music doesn't include any traditional idioms?"

Of course it does. But on the whole they aren't the same idioms found in English traditional music, which is why people raised on popular music find it so hard to understand folk, especially English folk - Irish tunes somehow seem to be more accessible.

I once played for a ceilidh at a folk festival which had attracted quite a large crowd of the local youth. Watching them trying to dance to a hornpipe was highly entertaining - they just couldn't get the hang of the rhythm. I'm sure they were well able to dance to the rhythms of their own preferred music.