There are two issues being confused here by flakmongers who seem to hate the idea of there being an English (or more than one English) tradition.

If you're going to fulminate against other commenters, could you identify the people you're fulminating against? Speaking for myself, the fact that there's more than one English tradition is a point I've made, repeatedly, arguing against WAV's fetishised version of "our good English culture".

Does it make sense for people to perform mostly within the tradition from which they come? Of course it does.

My father was born in Wrexham, my mother in Battersea; I grew up in South Wales and South London; and I've spent more than half my life in South Manchester. What's the tradition from which I come? Welsh? (Which - North or South?) London? Lancashire? If I consciously chose to position myself in any one of those traditions I'd have serious difficulties - not least because that I'd have to get all the material from other performers, from books, from records and from the Net, just as I would if I adopted any other tradition.

I am not Bob Copper or Shirley Collins; in musical terms, "the tradition from which I come" means precisely nothing. I sing traditional material because I like it, just like WAV. I get the material I sing from books and records and from the Net, just like WAV. Neither of us is doing anything to perpetuate "the tradition from which [we] come", because at this point in history that tradition doesn't actually exist. (At least, that's true for me - WAV may have run into some genuinely vernacular traditional culture Down Under, and perhaps could be doing the world a service by keeping it going.)

Talking about 'English' traditional music is either dishonest or nonsensical - as if you could conjure up a coherent national culture by simply excluding everything 'un-English' (and who would judge?).