We do seem to cling on the idea of music having a national identity. There have been recent references here to "an American tune" or a "Scottish song". Is it a good idea and can it work in the world today?

I suppose it serves the very useful purpose of helping to identify songs/tunes but giving them a nationality seems to me, to place an artificial limit on them. The same difficulties arise when try to fit songs/tunes into nationalities as when trying to fit people into them, you tend to have problems with 'borderline cases'.

If a song is written by an Irishman, living in America about Scotland and is sung by a Canadian in French in Australia, does that make it an Irish song?.....(Yes, I suppose that is just about the best definition of an Irish song I have ever heard)!!!!*Smiles*

I would probably be happier singing 'traditional' songs about 'Cornbread, Peas and Black Molasses' than 'The Nutting Girl', but whether anyone would be happy to hear it is another matter? I would know equally little about the subject matter of either, but what does my preference for the former indicate? (Apart from the fact that I have been listening to Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, today)

In fact, rather than sing 'traditional' songs, that I don't feel 'honest' about performing, I write my own songs, which reflect all the styles that I like. Are they English songs?

I also write original tunes, which without the words are probably more difficult to pin a nationality on. They reflect, pretty much all the music that has influenced me over my 40+ years. Without any deliberate effort on my part to make them so, some of them sound Irish, others Scottish, not very many sound English, but they must be English tunes, because I live here and I am English? Or are they? I am sometimes asked, for the titles and then usually for the nationality of the tunes and I do not honestly know how to answer. Not that it really matters to me, but it seems to be important to them.

Can a music session playing 'Irish' tunes, with no Irish people, in the US, or Australia, or Japan be called an Irish session?

What would you call a music session in Ireland, made up of entirely Irish people playing 'bluegrass'? An Irish session?

Is it who, what or where?

I can understand why it is important for a collector or a scholar, to know (if possible) where a song/tune originates, but as a musician, I hope they can understand that for me, it is more important to know where it is going. To me music is a universal language and has no nationality.