What do these expressions have in common?

French fries
Wiener dog
German shepherd
Chinese restaurant
Scotch tape

They look national, but they aren't. Nobody expects to order French fries and to receive potatoes from France. If your child says "Look, a wiener dog!" you do not expect it to come from Wien, etc.

"Irish music" is becoming a phrase such as that.

When I was a kid, there was a kind of music on the radio called "country and western." It was an acknowledged class of music, old-fashioned and sentimental. But in the last 50 years, that music has become harsher, more commercial, and more like rock. But the people behind that brand of music are powerful, and no lone radio announcer is going to be first to say, "Country? What does this stuff have to do with the country?"

So when the man-on-the-street needed a name for old-fashioned dance tunes and ballads, he came up with "Irish music." It is not a strictly-sensible name, but nobody has ever said that language is strictly sensible. Instead of criticizing, we should be glad that people are fighting to keep the old music alive in the face of Nashville's assault on the human mind.

A few days ago I went to "Irish Fest" here in Kansas City. I listened to five numbers by a band from Ireland, and the first four were American. (After that we couldn't stand the miserable sound, so we went home.) So apparently even musicians from Ireland have a loose definition of 'Irish music.'