ABSTRACT
It is not easy to talk about music and culture together, much less define them in ways that draw them together. Definitions of music that we might extract from widely used dictionaries neither include the word culture nor refer to any intrinsic or extrinsic property of the “arranging of sounds in time” or “a musical composition” (American Heritage Dictionary) that has anything to do with culture. Definitions of culture, it goes without saying, also do not refer to music in any explicit way. Music and culture, broadly or narrowly defined, are not convenient discursive fits. When we do try to fit them together-and at base, this is what the authors contributing to the present volume are committed to doingnot everyone is happy. We have all had music teachers who have insisted that “music is music,” and that it “doesn’t need to be about culture.” We have all known social scientists who have kept music at arm’s length from culture because it is so many “notes on a page,” a technical language spoken by specialists and not the generalists who want culture to be an umbrella for all human activity.
