Music is the organised movement of sounds through a continuum of time. Music plays a in all societies, and it exists in a large number of , each characteristic of a geographical or a historical era.


All known societies have music, but only a few languages have a word for it. In Western culture, dictionaries usually music as an art that is concerned with combining sounds - particularly pitches - to produce an artefact that has beauty or attractiveness, that follows some kind of and intelligible structure, and that special skill on the part of its . Clearly, music is not easy to , and yet historically most people have recognised the of music and generally agreed on whether or not a given sound is musical.

border exist, however, between music and other sound such as speech, and the of the world differ in their opinion of the musicality of various sounds. Thus, simple tribal chants, a half-spoken of singing, or a composition by a program may or may not be accepted as music by members of a given society or subgroup. Muslims, for example, do not consider the chanting of the Koran to be a kind of music, although the of the chant is to that of secular singing. The social of sounds may determine whether or not they are regarded as music. Industrial noises, for , are not usually regarded as music except when presented as part of a composition controlled by a . In the last 50 years, however, new in Western music have this view. Composers such as John Cage have produced works in which the listener is invited to hear music in the ambient sounds of the .

Opinions also differ as to the origins and spiritual value of music. In some African music is seen as something human; among some Native Americans it is thought to have originated as a way for spirits to . In Western culture music is regarded as good, and sounds that are welcome are said to be "music to the ears". In some other - for example, Islamic culture - it is of low value, associated with sin and evil, and attempts have been made to outlaw its practice.