Re playing "older" music (like 40s and 50s), you don't hear too much white-created music from then either, unless you're really into that kind of stuff. Black or white, the 40s was the era of the big band, and that's not a style most folks today like.

Some older stuff survives the test of time - Jerry Lee Lewis, for example. Similarly Chuck Berry from black music of the time - plenty of folks play "Johnny B Goode", even if you might not hear the original. (You might ask how many black musicians would play "Johnny B Goode", though, and that's a valid question which I couldn't answer.) Mostly though, these are songs which are recognisably the precursors of modern pop and rock, and can still be appreciated with modern "ears".

And FWIW, white music isn't taught in schools either. You'll maybe get lessons in classical, but that pretty much stops at Beethoven and Mozart. You certainly wouldn't learn about Turlough o'Carolan, Glenn Miller, Buddy Holly, the Beatles or Bob Dylan. Nor would you be taught dances like the Charleston, waltz or foxtrot - I go to barn-dances fairly often, and hardly anyone under 70 knows a waltz step. Nor would you get instrument lessons unless your parents paid for them. So this isn't a uniquely black issue - white-originated culture also tends to forget its roots.

Maybe things are changing though? Certainly pop on the radio today is much more likely to feature people actually playing instruments, and older musical forms like the original "soul" style are being revived. This is a change from the last ten years that saw white people picking up the black styles of turntablism, mixing and rap. This to the extent that Tim Westwood, an upper-middle-class rich English kid, adopts a fake inner-city black American accent. Incidentally, Sasha Baron Cohen's "Ali G" character and his "is it cos I iz black?" approach were lampooning that "wigga" fakeness, not black culture itself.

For the further past though, it's not too surprising that black Americans wouldn't know about sailing traditions. Black sailors would be more likely to integrate into poor-white society or back into their African roots - their experiences wouldn't get back to black Americans.

Graham.