As the lights in the lecture hall darken, thirty or so sleepy faces tilt up toward the bright, intently watching the white screen as it descends from the ceiling. This is a typical scenario for the freshman art students’ Tuesday lecture class, but on this one particular day, we are collectively able to muster an unusual amount of enthusiasm for this lecture. The reason? Quite simply, Pablo Picasso. Father of Analytical Cubism, one of the chief figures in modern art, as well as being one of the most well known and most popular, Picasso stands as a towering idol and inspiration to many of us as we recount his history. However, as the lecture goes on, I found out an interesting fact about the painter that took me by surprise. Whenever I though about Picasso and cubism, I had always assumed the style had been his own invention; an original, new way of painting that had come to him from some divine form of inspiration. It was revealed, in that dark room surrounded by other artists and victims of inspiration, that Picasso’s square, blocky, misshapen figures were created from the likeness of African art, or more specifically, African masks (“Picasso”). Admittedly, it is certainly not the most shocking thing I’v ever heard, and I wasn’t in any state of disbelief, but a familiar, uneasy feeling did come over me. I have a strong affinity toward many different forms of rock music, installed into me by my parents and the Beatles at an early age. And soon after I began to learn about the history of the music I loved, I learned how it all came from the African American community, and soon after that, I learned why almost all of the rock musicians I had ever heard of were all white, despite knowing where and from whom it had actually originated from. It’s a strange thing for an 8 year old to hear from her father that Buddy Holly, the Beatles, and Elvis Presley had taken a form