I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.
I think a lot of the intention of bands, especially in the last year, is to spread themselves out geographically and borrow from different cultures and different sounds, and to be eclectic. And that's great in terms of dynamics, but it also tends to not have that torpedo and fire running through it. If you're spreading yourself out across the globe, you're also not emphasizing a singular point, which I think great rock music has always done.
The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.
I extract what I consider the best material from different sources. But often the material I perform comes from a very strange location in history, which are minstrel shows.
The concept of cultural appropriation is nothing less than an intellectual fence: Keep out.
English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin - a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.
Take what the old-church found in Mithra's tomb, candle and script and bell, take what the new-church spat upon and broke and shattered.
A lot of art and visual crafts are based on appropriating things.
Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough.
The Malays can hardly be said to have an indigenous literature, for it is almost entirely derived from Persia, Siam, Arabia, and Java. Arabic is their sacred language.
Plagiarism is basic to all culture
Momentum was part of the exhilaration and the exhaustion of the twentieth century which Coward decoded for the British but borrowed wholesale from the Americans.
I think, in history, everything is about the remix.
The journalistic and political classes are very eager to borrow the cultural authority of comedians when it suits them, sending out gala invitations and posing for photos in hopes that a bit of that edgy satirical shine will rub off on them.
English urban artists were very used to making secondhand American music, and I thought that was boring.
If I see someone out there mouthing the words to a bit, I'm not having fun.
I worry about what we'll do in the future, [about the instantaneous co-opting of pop culture]. Where is our new stuff going to come from?
In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.
..Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating - taking something for one’s own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The “use” one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor.
Throughout its history, Islam has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations, both ancient and modern.
Western civilization is the most successful civilization the world has ever seen. And some of the reasons for that is it's borrowed from other cultures along the way, back to Mosaic law, the Greek age of reason, Roman law and the Roman order of government, and the Republican form of government, by the way that we're guaranteed in our constitution.
Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator.
From Architecture down to the Zodiac, every science worthy of the name was imported by the Greeks
Every time someone ends a prayer in the Western world they say Amen - that is the name of an Egyptian god associated with completion. So we're still praying to their gods.
Youngsters in Punjab have a borrowed mindset, music and fashion sense from Canada and Hollywood because a large number of our relatives are settled abroad.
