A missionary friend once told me he believed that if you worship in spirit and in truth, then this supersedes all musical, cultural and ethnomusicological boundaries.
Sounds like a nice idea, but it could scarcely be further from the truth. Let me explain why. Take, for example, a sitar player from India, a kora player from Senegal, an urhu player from China, a balalaika player from Russia and finally a charango player from Peru. Put them all in a room together and say: “Make music!” What will happen? There will be something close to chaos, much misunderstanding and they will be unlikely to find anything which they can all play and make musical ‘sense’ of together. And these are all stringed instruments with many structural and technical similarities. If we were to add wind or percussion to the mix, the complications would only escalate!
So, why is this? It’s because, just as each culture speaks a different language, so their ‘musical language’ differs. The choice of scale, the rhythmic patterns used, the shape of the melody, the way a piece starts and ends, dynamics, tempo and articulation all differ hugely from culture to culture."
(Rob Baker. Adventures in Music and Culture: Travels of an Ethnomusicologist in West Africa)
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