Further, re: ... I suppose that means that .... all folk music composed by Europeans aren't really European music since they can speak to any and all folks regardless of their race/ethnicity...

I would suspect that most Mudcatters would agree with that but that most averge people on the planet who may not be as culturally "aware" as your average Mudcatter may be stuck in a perceptopn where they have not even thought about it at all.

Here at Mudcat I suspect we're a group of people who are a little bit better informed, and with a little more multicultural experience both in general socially, and in their relationships.

Beyond that, there is the confusion in the way one might speak of "origins" in the same way one might speak of "characteristics" of the music, complicated by the fact that most music categories are and have been the artificial constructs of TODAY'S commercial enterprises. "Country" artists, for example, decry being "pigeon-holed" into that category, and then market the heck out of themselves IN that category, and it may have nothing to do with origin. Or someone might claim "country" as a point of cultural origin while creating a form of music that sounds nothing like the rest of "country" music as so labeled by the record industry.

Language-- complicated stuff.

~Susan