Most of the music that I listen to clearly borrows from the past, takes technologies of the present, and creates the music of the future again. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the electronic beats that I listen to are going to be what everyone listens to, or that Bossa Nova and Samba are going to be predominant music genre in your home (though they should *grin*). No, what I’m saying is that digital technologies facilitate the appropriation of past cultural artifacts that were produced for consumption, and then subsequently modify and make them the artist’s own. Take a look at the below YouTube video for a demonstration of taking up a past cultural artifact (part of an episode from the West Wing) and modifying it to make a contemporary political statement:
Taking the past and making it one’s own isn’t anything new; artists have been reinterpreting prior songs/artwork/performances and making a buck off their reinterpretation for a long, long time. What is new is: