roots music a term that came into vogue after the 70s in an attempt to find a word that expressed more clearly what "folk" music was all about, since "folk" in popular usage had come to mean whatever the speaker wanted it to mean - usually any performer using an acoustic guitar.

Roots music can be used to describe the folk music of a particular culture - "My musical roots are Celtic" - but it's quite common for people to take up the roots of another culture. Someone from Japan might well be obsessed with bluegrass, and feel that this is the music that really stirs the soul. They may well know more about it than people born into the bluegrass tradition. On the other side of the coin are people raised with a particular musical tradition who pay no attention to it, and prefer whatever the pop media has to offer.