John Adams statement a little earlier seems to express the society's position rather well, and also is a very convincing account of what its postion should be. Look at the central core, see how it relates to the peripheries. Sounds perfect to me.
    The danger, of course, faced by both Comhaltas and the EFDSS in the past, is there has often been a temptation to attempt to create a central core, rather than to study or promote it. And that temptation has not always been successfully resisted, in either Ireland or England. In Ireland these tendencies have often led to a kind of "ethnic cleansing" of traditional practises not perceived as sufficiently "Irish". In England, because it is a much bigger place, the temptation has led often to attempts to come up with some sort of lowest common denominator "English" music or dance, which never actually existed in the country but is somehow felt to be an average version of England's traditions. Because, inconveniently for some patriots, there is no such thing as a single entity called "English music" or "Irish music".
    AS Oscar Wilde very nearly said, folk music is never pure and never simple.