My ignorance pertaining to music is a recurring theme in my life.  Today on Facebook, I found some folks poking fun at young people for their musical ignorance of a past legend and I couldn’t help but relate (to the ignorant youngsters, that is!):

My first response is to confess that I barely know who Kanye is, and I certainly could not name any of his songs.  I think he is from Chicago, which makes it even worse for me.  I also have to imagine that in 40 years, should I still be around, my knowledge of pop acts of the 2010s will be unimaginably pathetic.  Ironically, considering the arguments some have made about the Beatles’ co-option of other groups’ sounds, some folks have been writing about hip hop being all white by then!  To be fair, from my perspective music is all co-option and building on the past.  Never as much as in hip hop and electronica, of course, where the music is often constructed from the samples of others.

Ignorance is not bliss.  But sometimes it’s really not too impactful; I’ll confess that it just took me a moment to remember George’s last name.  The kids are alright.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan