Cross-Cultural Influences Quotes

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and 'retro' clothing in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter of TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works.

I think every culture - you can call it an American Ronin, a medieval knight errant, you could talk about 'Shane.' There is an archetype that I think is actually common to a lot of cultures, and even the Clint Eastwood stuff was probably as influenced by the Japanese stuff, and yet done by an Italian.

Cultural ‘authenticity’ is neither national nor exclusive. Even Picasso and Gauguin drew richly on West African influences in their most distinctive creations, reminding us of the cosmopolitan spirit that underlies dynamic modern identities.

My mom is from Cuba, my dad is from Spain, and I grew up in Miami. So there's maybe a little more flair in me than typical Silicon Valley types.

My mother is half-French, half-Malagasy, so I've been listening to African music, like Malian and Congolese music, since I was a child.

I've never left China. My family's been there for 600 years. But my architecture is not consciously Chinese in any sense. I'm a western architect.

I mix things from my Somali culture and my American side.

I'm heavily influenced by European and American cinema, but the further I get in my career, the more I find myself looking back East for inspiration.

Europe's the mayonnaise, but America supplies the good old lobster.

I grew up in a kibbutz in the Galilee, but we were surrounded by Arabic villages, so I heard all these sounds and all this music. My father was very close friends with one of the Bedouin tribes, so I would always go there, to weddings, and I was always very fascinated by that music.

We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Northwest D.C. I was essentially raised by a Panamanian man and a Jamaican woman. That's why I have such a fascination with Jamaican food.

You don't just have to be influenced by rock, or goth, anymore. It's okay to say, 'My influences are Tin Pan music from Bali and Rihanna.' There are still so many combinations that haven't been done yet.

One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.

The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures.

When other people look at K-pop with a more traditional Western lens, or when people listen to it, it may sound like a combination of all different genres.

The whole cultural diversity and musical diversity, I think they almost go hand in hand, you know? It's like a mind space or a it's having an open mind to what else is out there.

My mom spent like a decade of her life living in Paris, and I grew up listening to a lot of French music as well as Arabic music.

You put my voice on R&B melodies, on top of a real country band, and the sky's the limit.

A performer learns with experience and with age. I did not know the future when I left home and started out to begin my career: I started qawaali; then I met Peter Gabriel and was exposed to a lot of new ideas.

Once I started writing the screenplay of 'Bride & Prejudice,' I was convinced Jane Austen was a Punjabi in her previous birth.

My mom, well, she's half Greek, half German-Italian; born in England. She's just a nomad. She loves Middle Eastern style, Indian style, so much so that she ended up having Indian babies.

When I lived in Beijing in 1996, it was a horizontal city. If you wanted to go out for a burger, if you wanted to really treat yourself, you went to this place called the Jianguo Hotel. The architect had proudly described it as a perfect replica of a Holiday Inn that he had seen in Palo Alto, California.

At the heart, it is world music that I do. It's all connections. Ultimately, we're all connected.

I'm trying to strike a balance between Bollywood and Hollywood.

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap