I think that the influence will happen (if we want it or not). Any kind of music (including the traditional) reflects on impulses from the outer world. As we can see, there are many folk musicians who are trying to fuse various music genres with folk music (mostly jazz). Since the music depends strongly on the interest of the audience, the folk musicians are trying to meet the requirements of the "market". However, there are still some groups that are trying to preserve the very original folk music.

In my opinion, the traditional music has to develop as all the other music genres. It will undergo changes, but whether they are unwanted or not, I can not say. What are the unwanted changes? How do we decide? Who decides if the change is wanted or unwanted? Listeners? Market? Traditionalists? All of them have different preferences, so any change will be unwanted for some groups of people.

I am not an ethnomusicologist, but I think it would be impossible to prevent remote traditional musicians from hearing outside influences, and indeed, it would be naive to imagine that this has not always happened. For example, a Scottish fiddler on a remote island in the eighteenth century might hear music from visitors to the families in bigger houses. Or traditional musicians in former colonies would have heard the music of the incomers. Not to mention the influence of radio and other forms of communication.

Furthermore, I am uncomfortable with the suggestion that outside influences - something natural and unavoidable - should be viewed as some kind of "contamination". Is it not patronising to imagine that a community should be "protected" from other cultural influences?

I agree Karen. In a Western perspective Beethoven is paradigm of excellence in "music". In a planetary perspective Beethoven is master in embodying an open field of different soundthinking, and his energy diffused and still diffuses into large section of sonic thinking; spanning from abstract to rag-time, to pattern-like textures. We can't protect ouselves from so many waves of "difference", we need to listen to the difference, the in between.

We need to stop thinking clouds as real entities; images are what they are: icons, projections. Clouds are clouds, cloudiness is not a cloud, as liquidity doesn't pertain to water only. Happiness is not just joy. Like thinking 'late years', the "style" of late years. What does it means, how does it play out? The world will be unreconciled, like in the late years of Beethoven, when he refused to reconcile into a single image what is not reconciled - "Ode an die Freude" ...

Exposure to the music itself may not be so bad, but exposure to modern western keyboard instruments can destroy native systems of tuning and scale construction. This has already happened all over the world, as 12-toned equal temperament is an illness of the occidental classical tradition. While most modern synthesizers and electronic "pianos" (which often have other sounds as well) can be more or less retuned, the limitation to 12-tone note sets, combined with the inherent limitations of MIDI (again, developed with the assumption of only 12 tones) makes it difficult to easily model complex system such as Arabic Maqamat and classical Indian systems.

Merhaba, köklerinden koparılmak istenen kültür, sentez üretiminin önünü keser. Cumhuriyetin kuruluş aşamasında Türklere dayatılan batı müziği ve Türklerin bulunduğu coğrafyada kullandıkları müziğin hiçe sayılması, Türkiye'de son 70 yıl içinde yüksek kültür ürünlerinin, müzik eğitiminin ve halk müziğinin gelişmesini engellemiştir.