Some Thoughts on "Universals" in World Music

and our own that captured our interest in the first place and we, as well as the next man, respond to the unique, the fascinating, the exotic. It follows naturally that much of our discourse is devoted to the differences between musics, but we spend so much of our time on these differences, brought to us from every corner of the world, and sometimes from our own backyards, that we can't help wondering if there are not also great overruling similarities. The plenary session on at the November, 1970, annual meeting of the Society was an attempt to consider these similarities in the broadest perspective. We are drawn together at our various kinds of meetings because we share an interest and we do not doubt for a moment that this interest is music, however it is defined and whatever the culture from which it derives. One of the odd things about us is how heterogeneous we are as a Society: we are made up of anthropologists, ethnologists, folklorists, dancers, dance ethnographers, linguists, sociologists, and I haven't even begun to enumerate the musicians and the scholars of music among us, who constitute the greater part of our numbers. When we are assembled, it sometimes occurs to us to ask what we really have in common. If there are elements of music that are found everywhere, then these are what we share. A sharpened awareness of such elements could be valuable in helping us understand ourselves as a group. Let me venture the opinion, first, that there are probably no absolute universals in music. I say this simply on the grounds of human variability and complexity. Any student of man must know that somewhere, someone is doing something that he calls music but nobody else would give it that name. That one exception would be enough to eliminate the possibility of a real universal. But I think there are plenty of near-universals and, even though such a term contradicts itself, a near-universal is near enough for our purposes. I will be satisfied if nearly everybody does it. I will just mention some of these and then go on to the one that interests me the most. Almost everywhere there is some sense of the tonic, some kind of a tonal center in music. Almost everywhere music establishes a tendency. It seems to be going somewhere, whatever its terms are, and the joy