In The Cambridge Music Guide edited by Stanley Sadie and Alison Latham (Cambridge University Press, 1985) music is described in the following manner which emphasizes its pivotal role as an integral aspect of life.
In every society, in every period of history, men and women have made music. They have sung it and danced to it; they have used it in solemn rituals and in light-hearted entertainments; they have listened to it in fields and forests, in temples, in bars, in concert halls and opera houses; they have made it not only with their voices but by adapting natural objects and banging them, scraping them and blowing through them; they have used it to generate collective emotion – to excite, to calm, to inspire action, to draw tears. Music is not a fringe activity or a luxury one; it is a central and necessary part of human existence.
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