Hot Rod Biology

last Thurs:

ummm...yes...

copying used to be seen as a fair-enough way to understand what ìthe mastersî were doing, being able to replicate. They were always seen as learning though - not ways forward...

The idea that one has the right to appropriate something close to home over something else is strange but it does exist - I guess I was thinking about Malcolm Mclaren going to NYC, or Paul Simon going to Africa.

However, look what the European Impressionists achieved by poaching formalistic devices from totally other cultures (Japan) - actually using the other to re-define your own direction in an obviously valuable way (colour, framing, composition, etc). In many ways it seems that the appropriation of the mis-understood can be more valuable than the appropriation of the known.

Actually - maybe all I just proved is that appropriation and parody are not transferrable across cultures?

So anyone can appropriate anything within a specific culture..?
Oh dear - is that a truism or is it an oxymoron?

Whoa! Dude. Good to see/read you here!

Not sure I got much to say right now except for that I feel like we need to be able appropriate across cultural boundaries . . . otherwise we wouldn't have rock'n'roll. And perhaps this relates to my idea about hybrids? I can't stand white-boy-blues, or white fellas playing dub or reggae . . . sounds hypocritical ñ probably is, except that I think what I'm arguing for is that we need that stuff to get somewhere 'new'. Rockabilly was a new sound that developed as a hybrid of what a lot of the Black blues artists had been doing post-Muddy Waters, mixed with what Bill Monroe had developed, Bluegrass [which was in itself a hybrid]. Evolution calls for us to not be too protective I think?