Right oh Big Al,

You say, "every music in the world has been bastardised in some form by people known as musicians."

Yes, this is a fundamental truth whether we like it or not. I think though, that this process comes in two not very subtly different forms and depends entirely on the musicians' own strength of tradition.

All musicians like to beg, steal and borrow. And all musicians have tradition, in some form or other. But if you are a musician with little sense of tradition, little actual tradition, or with a week, un-established or manufactured tradition, then what you beg, borrow and steal will swamp whatever tradition you have and while in the long run, it could possibly be the beginning of a new tradition, initially it is bound to merely create second hand, second rate music.

If, however your tradition is strong and well established, and your personal intimacy with it is strong and well established, then there is a much higher chance that what you beg, borrow and steal will enrich one's tradition rather than dilute it.


There comes a problem though, and that is one of protectionism. If a tradition requires it to be protected then it is, by definition, week. Should week traditions be protected? My opinion is that they shouldn't. There are enough musicologists archivists and historians around to preserve traditions in museums for posterity, but I for one am not interested in traditions that are being protected from outside influence. For they are, by definition, being artificially closed to further enrichment.