Scott Johnson: "[C]ross-cultural translation was the rule among the early Minimalists, with significant influences appearing from India, Japan, Bali and Africa [...] La Monte Young and Terry Riley seriously studied Indian music, and Steve Reich found a model for his brand of shifting polyrhythm in African drumming, while Philip Glass tells how a friend's verbal description of counting systems in Indian classical music provided him with an inspiration that was as much imagination as influence" (40)
"a new attempt to re-establish [a] relationship with the world" (57-8)
minimalism performed an "end run around modernism, avoiding prohibitions against undisguised references to popular or folk forms by referring to musics from beyond the West's boarded-over frame of reference"