It is my hope that one day music will have the power to build up walls around culture and we can distinguish ourselves from each other as much as nessecary. I suggest finding your influences within your own surroundings and reveal to yourself some sense of instinct in your creative outlets. You should not feel encouraged through study or trend to borrow from another genre and attempt to call it your own art. Art is only properly expressed when the artist is using his/her background to tell a story of where their path came from, stands today, or is heading toward in the future. Any attempt to grasp another cultures perspective should only be viewed as an appreciation of that culture and is at best a guess to that cultures appearance. Diversity is best honored through the space it takes to not influence it...
