The Seduction of Inaccessability

Someone just drove past blasting some hard funk from a few decades ago. I find it odd that we have millenia of musical traditions to draw from, and we generally listen to the last half-century alone. But this isn't too surprising, we do this with all sorts of things, and for a very practical reason: it's easier to access some things than others. The culture of the moment will preserve that which it can relate to best, and the things that are best preserved are easiest to obtain. In some ways this seems like a good thing — it's best to weed out the irrelevant. It also explains why inaccessible, obscure, "eclectic" things are so interesting: they're essentially a rebellion against the cultural climate.