"re-inventing the wheel"

We have all heard the phrase "to re-invent the wheel". Generally it refers to someone who makes insignifaicant changes to an already existing idea and then claims it as there own invention. The difference between innovation and invention can be made no clearer than this. A composer may use someone elses theme or form and call it there own, but it is not a new idea, just a new take on an old idea. However, when someone created tracks on which to put a tank, rather than using tires since they puncture easily he was an innovator. Just as when one expands upon or creates new forms, styles and harmonies he, in the compositional world, separates himself as an innovator.

I suppose growing up in the USA and identifing myself as "American" it was natural to not see the rest of the "Americas" as "American". But as I have grown to have friends of many cultures I have begun to recognize that all of us from the USA have a very narrow view of the world, mind this is not our fault, but what we have been taught. We are not unlike those who would re-invent the world. We assimilate the ideas of many other countries and claim them to ourselves. "As American as Apple Pie" (Germanic in origion). But that is expected of a melting pot community. We should embrace our borrowings and our significant changes that have made them our own.

It has been stated that much of the early American (USA) music merely was an imitation of European music. I would state that much music of that time period was immitation of other music. Music was evolving through many small changes for a very long time. I certainly hope the expectation was not that the people who traveled to the Americas would abbandon all that they new and invent an entire new system of music. If they were to have ignored their musics past, how would they have progressed forward?

So the edge for me is where we cease to need a wheel at all! When we no longer see the need to make written records of our musical acheivements and fail to accept that someone can "reinvent a wheel" or have an entirely new idea and that is all a part of the process. I can't say I like all of the music I hear. As a young musician it was once pointed out to me that it matters not whether I like or dislike a work, but it does matter that I understand it's contributions, or lack there of to music. That I should keep an open mind to the ideas around me. That someday I may be surprised by what suddenly is interesting or unique or a throw to the past.

I'm okay with not liking every peice of music I hear. I still want to hear it... perhaps not several times! LOL! But I think learing is in the process and not in the result.