Yo! That is good stuff on the homepage: under the heading, "Blacks Imitating Whites Imitating Blacks..." That is odd how much the cakewalk had been imitated. It reminds me of the game 'Telephone,' where the end result is never the same as the initial saying. I wonder how much the cakewalk had been altered by the time of Ragtime. I don't know why I come up with these connections to rap, but this imitating notion immediately reminded me of the use of the "N" word. Whites used to (I guess some still do) use it as a derogatory term towards blacks. Now blacks use it quite freely (e.g. in their rap songs). I think this common use has desensitised our(or at least those that listen to rap) ears to this word. Now it is fairly tolerable to hear it from a black. However, I don't see the imitating ever being shifted back to the whites on this one! Anywho, back to topic on hand: I love Ed Ward's quote: "This is what makes artists artists: they take little bits of things from here and there and put them together in unexpected combinations that seem new and original." I never thought about it that way. Before when I was thinking about the diversity of styles on the 'Folkways Collection' I assumed that the artists took a style and transformed it to their own style on purpose. It's more amusing to think that they tried to sound like the previous style and failed, yet by failing they succeeded in creating a new style. It's like they can't sound the same no matter how hard they try because their own personal style will always be revealed. You can take an artist out of a style, but you can't take the style out of an artist? I love that essay too: "When Right Is Wrong," by Ed Ward. It is informative and humorous at the same time. It has some really good quotes, and some really funny ones: "They didn't have to be very good at it to impress the German audiences, who were more interested in getting drunk and chasing women." (This one was about the caliber of the Beatles performances.) I am a big Beatles fan, and I never really knew how their style came about, because it does sound completely original. Yet the essay gives direct examples of artists that influenced Lennon and the Beatles. Like Ward says, "It seems to be an unspoken rule of popular music: everything new comes from someone trying to imitate something and getting it wrong."