This course aims to provide introduction to traditional music cultures outside of the cultural milieu of Western art-music. Its primary purpose is to help students who are trained in Classical music to appreciate, understand and analyze unfamiliar music of societies whose concept of culture and life is different from ours. The students will be taught some of the basic methods for the study of music outside of the Western sphere (ethnomusicology) – methods that are becoming increasingly relevant for modern compositions and for the conceptions of Western art at large. We will discuss also the issue of the responsibility: what and how could, and why anything should be salvaged from these “endangered” cultures and whose task is to preserve them. Issues relating to the practice of music will include: social and religious functions in relation to musical structure, the structure and meaning of folk customs/rituals (and the music they use), transmission and professionalism, social and political uses, modernization/fusion/popular music. The course will give a general introduction to a wide range of topics and problems but will focus on a few basic issues and music cultures.