GUEST GLueman says:"Here's some of my issues with the 1954 definition (for the umpteenth time). It assumes one moment in time, the mid-late C19th, was an uncompromised window on common popular music and the recorders of it were impartial."

Well, Glueman, if you read the 1954 definition in a little more detail than you have obviously managed so far, you will find it was written in 1954 (as it says on the tin). Not in the mid-19th century. And I have read it quite carefully(there is a lot wrong with it, it's worth a close look), and I can't find anything that claims, or even implies, that it is about the mid-late 19th century. Perhaps you could point us to the relevant bit, if you are so sure? I may well have missed something, I am a musician, not an academic.