Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Eh?i have no idea if they felt ashamed or not, but they certainly didn't take the development and refinement of social dance music seriously as a worthy pursuit on which to spend a lot of time and energy, largely because of these all pervasive attitudes.
I can't speak much about Eastern or Southern European traditions - so feel free to correct me if you happen to know that eg flamenco was considered to be a bit of an embarassing waste of time even by the musicians and dancers - but it's certainly been taken seriously as a worthy pursuit in Scotland and Ireland, by the people who were doing it if not by the people watching from the academies.
No, it has to do with your tendancy to make massive and incorrect generalizations that don't even have much to do with your point.Lets not forget what we are talking about here: the origins of Techno. If you think Techno has just as much to do with ballroom music as it does various percussion traditions in Africa...
If you'd claimed that social dance is more central to African than European cultures, or that forms of social dance and dance rhythms are more developed and sophisticated in African than in European cultures then, well, there might have been the odd counterexample but I think most people would accept that they're counter to the general rule and that the basic point stood. So why come in swinging with the big generalization? The only thing it acheives is alienating people from your actual point!