"When you learn something from people, or from a culture, you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment to preserve it and build on it"
About this Quote
Yo-Yo Ma frames cultural learning as an exchange with receipts: if you take, you owe. Calling it a "gift" sounds gentle, even grateful, but it also sneaks in a moral contract. Gifts create relationships; they bind you to the giver. In an era where "influence" gets treated like a free buffet (sample, remix, monetize, move on), Ma insists that being inspired isn’t neutral. It carries obligations.
The intent is less about etiquette than about power. Cultures don’t circulate on a level playing field, especially in global music where Western institutions often have the loudest amplifiers. By emphasizing "accept it" and "commitment", Ma pushes back against the idea that borrowing is automatically respectful because it’s admiring. Admiration can still be extraction. His line asks: Are you preserving the source community’s dignity, credit, and continuity, or just harvesting its beauty?
The subtext is also autobiographical. Ma’s career has been built on virtuosity plus translation: bringing Bach to huge halls, but also collaborating across traditions (the Silkroad project) in a way that signals stewardship, not tourism. "Preserve it and build on it" is the key two-step: don’t freeze a culture into a museum diorama, but don’t treat it as raw material either. Preservation without growth becomes fetish; growth without preservation becomes erasure.
It works because it turns "learning" into accountability. Not guilt, not gatekeeping - responsibility with a long horizon.
The intent is less about etiquette than about power. Cultures don’t circulate on a level playing field, especially in global music where Western institutions often have the loudest amplifiers. By emphasizing "accept it" and "commitment", Ma pushes back against the idea that borrowing is automatically respectful because it’s admiring. Admiration can still be extraction. His line asks: Are you preserving the source community’s dignity, credit, and continuity, or just harvesting its beauty?
The subtext is also autobiographical. Ma’s career has been built on virtuosity plus translation: bringing Bach to huge halls, but also collaborating across traditions (the Silkroad project) in a way that signals stewardship, not tourism. "Preserve it and build on it" is the key two-step: don’t freeze a culture into a museum diorama, but don’t treat it as raw material either. Preservation without growth becomes fetish; growth without preservation becomes erasure.
It works because it turns "learning" into accountability. Not guilt, not gatekeeping - responsibility with a long horizon.
Quote Details
| Topic | Legacy & Remembrance |
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