> Will European Classical music continue to be elevated
> above Jazz as the more sophisticated art form, or will that
> change?
The students I taught in my intro to lit courses (University of Oregon, a big state school, not elitist at all) were consistently much more appreciative of/clued in about jazz than 19th century European tonality, so there are some battles being won at Ground Zero.
The other side of the hip hop debate which often doesn't get mentioned, though it should, is that hip hop is multinational, through and through, from its sounds and techniques, to the communities of its producers -- Cypress Hill is Cuban-American, Italian-American, Mexican-American; DJ Q-Bert is Filipino-American; the EU, long since become as ethnically diverse as the US, has stylin' hip hop communities. I'm not qualified to say anything about the East Asian hip hop scene, though I'm told one exists.
-- Dennis