true, and funny.

I struggle with that blog a little, truth be told. For every piercing insight into white pomposity (oh the irony!) there are some things that could be considered racist. It's a fine line. I draw your attention to the article called 'Asian Girls', actually one of their most popular pieces. In what sense is that OK?

I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to mis-attribute this quote to Voltaire.

That's a bit scary - I was only telling someone last weekend that I still love early hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash, Sugarhill Gang etc) and even some later stuff (De La Soul, Quest, G-funk) but can't really get my head round anything from the last 10 years.

I have to admit, I genuinely *do* listen to Jazz in the late evenings - on a Quad rather than Bose and I do have a fireplace though! :-)

This is obviously a joke but it's funny because it is genuinely true. It's something I've been wondering about for ages. Why do you so rarely see young black people playing the blues? Why is retro soul the reserve of white revivalists like Amy Winehouse and Eli Paperboy Reed? Why are none of the top jazz singers black - Jamie Cullum, Michael Buble, Clare Teal, Norah Jones, etc.
One theory is that for whatever reason black musicians are much less precious about their music and don't rate authenticity and purity as virtues in the same way as white musicians. This also explains why almost all the major advances in popular music have come from black musicians - because they were based on variants of previous musical forms. So, for instance, this is why Trinidadian calypso mutated into Jamaican mento, then ska, then rocksteady and then the globe conquering reggae of Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff in less than a couple of decades. And also why it didn't stop there and carried on into dub, dancehall, soca and the like.
If Jamaica was entirely inhabited by Europeans, would its residents still be playing steel pans and going on about how traditional and authentic their island's music is?

once said that the difference between the white music audience and the black music audience was that the white audience tended to be nostalgic, while the black audience didn’t and was always wanting to hear something new. Mind you that was in the ’70s. It’s an interesting observation though.
You don’t see a lot of black people at Northern Soul clubs, for instance.

Did you spot this on the same site?

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/09/85-the-wire/

"but is it real debate" will run and run all the time we can sell beer with made faux heritage, when provenance of something addds value it will be used and debated.
As to a taste for old music in different races and groups there is also a class dimension mixed up in this as well, this whole thing is done in broad brush strokes so here goes: the higher up the monetary and sociaa scale you go the more you value heritage because you may want to maintain your place in the hierarchy, you may believe it's what got you to where you are. The sense of history in culture is reassuring, a taste for the past isolates you from the hoipoloi. So it is a mixture of the all of the above and more. The poor not having a place in this pyramid turn to the hopeful present that isn't associated with past failures, struggles etc. Also ethnic minority are often the poor and music is made by poor people intially so they are only listening to the music they make! i have a feeling that as people get richer their tastes change .

All I would say in contadiction to this is that if a passion for the ever changing present or the misty past stops you listening to something and you miss out on some top tunes well more fool you whatever your background and origins.