fauxklore

Your point about Spanish music is a good one. I think the same question comes up with respect to any attempts to characterize music by nationality, though Jewish music has the inherent complicated mixture of Jewish nationhood and religion. Maybe I need to think about this the way I do about Russian music. Balakirev, Borodin and Mussorgsky wrote Russian music, while Tchaikowsky was a Russian composer. But, of course, Borodin's "Prince Igor" got used for the score to "Kismet," which is set in Arabia.