Why is it that so much of widely prevalent pop culture has such lowly, nay, disreputable, origins? This phenomenon spans everything from fast food (pizza was originally a creative way of using leftovers in working-class bakeries near the docklands of Naples, Italy) to music (expletive-laden rap lyrics started out as street poetry from poor black ghettoes in America’s decaying inner cities). Other examples abound. Take fashion, for example. T-shirts were originally crude working shirts for sailors laboring in the sultry tropics, fashioned from the cotton lining of chests used to store tea. Jeans began as miners’ working trousers, hacked out of sailcloth… Music and the performing arts provide even more examples. The Blues, that plaintive musical expression of poor black slaves and sharecroppers of the American Deep South is the foundation of much of today’s Rhythm& Blues, Jazz, Pop and Rock music. Then there’s the Tango, an energetic expression of sexuality, ow...