European common-practice music;or,continuing my interest in Native
Americans as a basis,all music known to the Arapaho no matter what
its origin;or all of the intertribally used repertory of Peyote music,no
matter that in each tribe it is exceptional;or the body of Native Ameri-
can popular music,despite its clear similarity to mainstream popular
music.Not as easy,I think,as dividing the world of language into lan-
guages,although I know that’s not so simple either.Even so,we can look
at the world of music in terms of musical languages.
The world of music also has social units.We may say that each social
group has its music.In some cases,say,in isolated tribal societies before
they had widespread contact with other cultures,this may have been
thoroughly consistent or homogeneous.In others,such as twentieth-
century Hungary,a great variety of musical styles and repertories makes
up the music regarded in some sense as “Hungarian,”or in which Hun-
garians have a stake.Then we also take into account bimusicality or mul-
timusicality.The Blackfoot people today say that they have two kinds of
music,Indian and white,and lay claim to both.My teachers in Persian
classical music claimed only their own repertory,but maintained that
they knew and understood other musics much as they spoke foreign lan-
guages competently while nevertheless regarding them as foreign.
There is,by the way,the question of association of music with ethnic-
ity.I have asserted that each social group has one music—at least—that
it regards as its own.Many social groups,in the United States they are
particularly prominent,use music and dance as their principal markers
of ethnicity,such as Polish-Americans and Italian-Americans celebrat-
ing their heritage and exhibiting it to outsiders.This may be true of other
social groups as well;age groups come to mind.Teenagers with hard rock,
preteens with the bubble gum music of yore,old folks with organ con-
certs,all claim a musical language of their own.
If the world of music can be conceived as a single body of communi-
cation capable of being understood at some level by all humans,or as a
group of discrete musics however designated,it can also be looked at as
a network of ideas.It is too complicated to present in all its manifesta-
tions,but I can suggest a couple of relevant points.Universality of the Music Concept
One problem with using universals as a guide to discovering the origins
of music is the difficulty in defining music in a way that is equally valid
for all cultures,and valid as well in the eyes of different societies of
humans.The world’s cultures vary (and varied in the past) in the degree
to which they have the concept of music and in the value and function
they assign to it.We say that music is a cultural universal,but do all465 An Ethnomusicologist Contemplates Musical Universals