I read the South Stole Americana article, and I wanted to keep shouting, "No! No! This isn't right!"
I wanted to mention Rickaby's Folk Songs Out of Wisconsin and Gardner/Chickering Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan and Korson's Pennsylvania songs and Cazden's Folk Songs of the Catskills and the Helen Harkness Flanders collections from New England - but I have to admit that these are not the songs that garner attention.
I grew up in a very ethnic Midwest, an area that was working as hard as it could to assimilate and to deny its roots. My French ancestors arrived in the Americas with the founding of Detroit in 1701, and it's hard to find any French influence anymore in the huge part of America that was French. The music of my Irish heritage was mostly religious songs written in the late 19th century, not traditional Irish music. My German great-grandfather may well have been a Jew who denied his heritage, and I know of no music from his part of the family.
My Rhode Island wife's first language was Polish, even though both her parents were born in the United States. I have learned parts of Polish songs she learned when she was young, and I also learned Polish songs from people I knew in Detroit and Milwaukee.
But I guess I have to admit that the Northern States did not develop a music of its own. The North was largely ethnic, and the ethnic groups did their best to leave the music and traditions of their homelands behind. I learned songs from school songbooks, not from family tradition.
-Joe-