There are currently two threads that I have recently seen on the Mudcat to which this is relevant.

It may also be relevant to some of Azizi's researches on the relevance of ethnicity.

Can anyone explain why quite a large number of non-Irish people seem determined to pass themselves off, musically, as Irish? Why do they not play and preserve their own traditions?

Why do so many white musicians determinedly play the blues and only the blues, when so few young persons to whose traditions the blues might be relevant play it?

Why do so many people want to be someone other than who they are?

Does Klezmer music suffer an invasion of players to whom it is an alien tradition? What about the non-Western music of the other areas around the Mediterranean?

Indeed what about performers of Western classical music from the far and middle east? Why do they abandon their own traditions and seek to play foreign music, and why do so few western musicians (the Beatles excepted) try to master the Indian instruments?