ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the notions of familiarity and unfamiliarity are not only fruitful ways for thinking about music more generally, but that - when applied to relations between musical expressions from around the world - they throw up a range of challenges to commonplace assumptions. It considers the cultural construction of musical aesthetics, and the challenges presented by aesthetically unfamiliar sounds, both from distant locations and from close to home. The chapter considers the historical development of communications and especially audio technology. It looks more specifically at music perception and paradoxically suggests that, from such a perspective, musical unfamiliarity is a consequence of cognition. The chapter also considers some of the perceptual challenges involved in learning to perform culturally unfamiliar musics. It discusses the use of the all too familiar term 'non-Western', followed by an overview of ethnomusicology's complex relationship with notions of the familiar and unfamiliar.
