Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

Topic: There are many different types of music in the world today. Why do we
need music? Is the traditional music of a country more important than the
international music that is heard everywhere nowadays?

You probably don't know English, but you are very likely to have heard the
song "Sound of Music". As you can see, music is a kind of communicator tool
that bridges the gap between different cultures. People also resort to music
to express their emotions, feelings, and even ideas. Musis plays a very
important role in our everyday life.

As an excellent communication tool, music can convey information much better
than what people say. When a young man falls in love with a young lady, a
piece of music played by guitar sometimes touch the girl's heart much
easilier than thousands of sweet words. In World War II, a very famous song
encouraged Chinese to keep fighting with invaders against so much
difficulty. And the song later became national song of China.

Music is also an international "language". A Chinese and an Australian may
not be able to understand each other by speaking. But they both can
understand the music of "Sound of Music". If somebody want to have some
basic concept of a country, one of the best ways is listening to the
traditional music of that country.

The traditional music of a country refers to the type of music that has
existed at that country for a long history, and often had been the
mainstream music. But nowadays, we can hear a lot of music in almost any
country, which is called the international music. In my opinion, the
traditional music is more important thant the international music. And we
should take more activities to preserve it. Because all international music
originated from traditional music. Jazz's origin is traditional African
music, and the famous music style Flamenco is mixed by traditional Indian
music and old-time Spanish music.

In conculsion, music is an important part of human life, and among different
music types, we should take more activities to preserve traditional music.