Having a differing point of view on what constitutes "a tradition" is not a call to arms.

Ron, I don't think anyone really has a different view on what constitutes a tradition -- just on what the phrase "traditional music" means. It has, for many years, been in general parlance as a term to define a type of music. I think the problem is that as you seem to be saying, and SOP keeps saying, is that any form of music has traditions attached to it. Of course they do. But this can be said of ANYTHING. Computers were, for years, traditionally band-aid beige in color. String quartets traditionally use two violins, a viola, and a cello. Goulash traditionally has beef in it. And on and on. You seem to be replacing a word in a specific descriptive phrase with its most generalized definition, and then getting a bit cranky because some of us find the generalized meaning to be meaningless for the purposes of describing the specific activity, and who think the commonly understood meaning to just fine the way it's been for many years. It is, as Crow Sister said earlier, a way for us to talk about a type of music without having to type an encyclopedia to avoid having you and others come unglued about labels being a disservice to folk music.

I, for one, would like to be able to talk about Xerox copiers without you telling me that that the word xerox refers -- as it plainly does in some contexts -- to all copiers, no matter the manufacturer. Sometimes it's nice to be able to say something about a Canon copier and have people know that I mean Canon copier, not think that I'm trying to trash all other manufacturers.