In the country of origin,Folk cultures and traditions were local, not national, and often, not even regional--they were community based, often centering around a church, synagogue, or mosque, and they re-establish themselves that way here--Back in Philly, I occasionally played dance music for the community of Serbs and Romanians from Banat with an accordionist who had played a lot for communities in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburg--and he loved to talk about the differences in the music, dance and performance styles--there were even language differences between, say, Chicago Romanian and Cleveland Romanian--

One night, I played the first couple notes of a waltz tempo tune that we had played at a party a few days before--he kicked me, hard, and loudly started into another tune--I was a bit annoyed when I asked him about it at the end of the set--"That song is from Zagreb! If you had played it, they would have killed us!"