Here is a simple, concrete East Asian example of some factors influencing the treatment of external musical features. A boat-rowing song from western Japan, "Hirado Bushi", migrated to Korea, perhaps early in this century, where it is
known as "Baet Norae" ("Boat Song"). The Koreans adopted the original melody almost without change, which was unproblematic since the particular Japanese scale used in that song was also known in Korea-the standard "anhemitonic pentatonic". The metre of the song, however, was changed significantly. The Japanese version was in a 2/4 metre, but virtually all Korean folk songs are in triple metre. The Korean singers, apparently unconsciously, re-interpreted the melody in triple rhythm. Now when similar songs move from western Japan southwards, to the Japanese island of Okinawa, a different change occurs. Duple metre is common in Okinawa as in mainland Japan, so there is no need to alter the metre. But the most common scale in Okinawa has a very different interval structure from the anhemitonic pentatonic, and Okinawan singers-again unconsciously-tend to re-interpret Japanese melodies into their own favourite scale: C-E -F-G-B L becomes C-E-F-G-B.