ABSTRACT
I suspect it was on a tourist’s visit to Naples in the nineteenth century that some sentimental literary gentleman opined, “Music is a universal language.” This absurd notion has bedeviled collectors of folk and primitive music ever since. I only wish I could hold the author’s head firmly against the bell of my loudspeaker while I played him a series of albums. Soft-headed as he was, he would be forced to say, “Music may be a universal language, but what a devilish lot of dialects!” As is so frequently the case, there is a perverse mite of truth in this apothegm. Of course there is no quicker way to establish a primary emotional contact with an exotic culture than through its music. Yet in all exotic music there lies a hard core of meaning and unfamiliar technique which must be absorbed slowly, and often suffered with, before the intent of the musical language comes clear to the listener.
