Lawrence Downes, in a NY Times piece celebrating the 50th anniversary of the admirable Arhoolie Rrecords writes about the wonderful range of music heard on that label:

If it was homegrown and honest Mr. Strachwitz found it, captured it and shared it.

Well, no, actually. There are plenty of other “homegrown” and “honest” musics that are outside the purview of Arhoolie - unless they have released anything by Ives or Copland, Carter or Adams, Reich or Singleton, Harbison or Tower, or…

The social construction of “homegrown”, “honest” or other words like “authenticity” always seems to exclude the homegrown, honest, and authentic creations of  America’s composers.