Dave, your heart's in the right place but I find the article a bit muddled. You throw in such observations as

"Tunisian artists now routinely use synthesisers to accompany the traditional bagpipes at live concerts"

To which I can only reply "so what?" if they want to do that why shouldn't they? Should we romanticize the "third world" and say that it hasn't the right to do what Martyn Bennet does in Scotland? You could just as easily say, "in these decadent times African American musicians use a Spanish invention, the guitar, to play a debased form of globalized African pop bastardized and adulterated with English folksong." You'd be describing the blues in the 1920s, of course.

There is a fallacy inherent in many opponents of the globalization of culture, and that is that Globalization always has the effect of weakening local cultures. But while not all globalization is good, not all globalization is bad either. Many of the great Irish musicians you obviously care about play tunes composed by Ed Reavy in the town where I live, Philadelphia. Without global flows of culture, these great tunes would never be played in Sydney, London or Sligo. In fact, even the fact of your youngsters playing "Scottish, Irish and English" tunes together is a consequence of the colonial subjugation of Ireland and Scotland by England in the past. Colonialism is, of course, the necessary precursor to globalization as we know it. The use of the violin (an italian invention) the guitar (a spanish invention which entered Irish music largely by way of the American folk revival) the Uillean pipes (probably an Irish invention) and the melodeon (a German invention) in the same band is another example of globalization itself--albeit in an earlier, more limited form. The supposedly Local culture you love is itself a product of the insidious influence of globalization!

I am not arguing that the kind of hugely destructive globalized economy at work in Argentina and in asian sweat shops is a good thing. But it's largely different from the globalization of music.

Remember, people have been sounding the death-knell of folk music for years, mostly blaming American pop music. But folk music is still here. And there, too. Enjoy it. And remember, it, too, is globalized!