I eat at a neighborhood Indian restaurant as often as I can and they have their TV permanently tuned to some bollywood-type station. And on that station I see something which, I don't know, seems a silly imitation of Western pop and dance, and it's heartbreaking when I think of how much richer the native traditions are. I come from a country that has always been a wannabe, at least in the urban centers, and its urban culture is pretty vapid too.
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I do see your point, but consider...
Traditions are invaluable but, as living things, have a limited space-time shelf life. That is, without their original context, venerable forms are museum pieces. Lovely? Often. Enriching to the "soul"? Sometimes.
The real challenge for various cultures in the Anglo-sphere age is to craft their own style of modernity. Borrowing from the West is fine; the Japanese surely did it and then went their merry way into "Samurai Champloo" and "Paranoia Agent" territory. But there should be a synthesis of these borrowings into a unique vision of the new (because we don't want to go all Jerry Mander here and long to keep peoples in some idealized version of the past).
A lot of the S. Korean pop I'm uh, subjected to is quite vapid. But what's the answer to that emptiness?
I don't precisely know but I do know using the Akhak Kwoebim (15th century Korean book of the people's musical arts) as your principal guide would not be a 21st century solution.
.d.
--------- At my Buddhist strip club, there is no pole, no stripper, no techno...only the impermanent arising of mind-formed entities temporarily manifesting.