There are plainly differences between what we perceive as modern cultural givens, and what moves our "inner spirit" (if we have one), yet the tendency I see here is to observe only the measurable vector.

I am not English merely because I was brought up in England (in fact, from the age of 3 to 6 I lived in Australia) nor indeed merely because both of my parents were English, nor because their parents were. What I think I perceive and others here do not is a deeper wellspring of "English-ness". The same applies for other nations with different attributions.

Of course, if that sort of collective subconsciousness does not exist, then it is not surprising that we see the Lancashire toreador, the white college bluesman, the urban English Irishman, the German country and western singer.

On balance it looks as if the soul surfers of folk music are headed the way of the dodo. There is no such thing as an alien (life, Jim, but not as we know it) - which means there is no such thing as a tradition, merely a record of times past.