Music in Diaspora: The View from Euro-America

In "Music in Diaspora," Slobin writes "for both individuals and groups, taste has become recognized as an important dimension of identity." This piece emphasizes diasporic identity and creating an us/them environment through isolation via different tastes and preferences in music, and yet it is states that "diasporic identity is not invented as a free expression of group will; it is improvised under pressure from within and without." How can one turn a diasporic identity into an empowering thing? Acknowledging and discussing the us/them dynamic can backfire on artists--is it empowering, isolating, ignorant, or "a step in the wrong direction?" Under the influence of the superculture, can one ever really be an individual within their subculture, or are there other unrecognizable elements that have made them exactly as they are, according to the superculture/media machine's "larger plan" of wrongly representing their subculture?