For the third approach to studying definitions, let’s return to the cocktail party, this time masquerading as fieldworkers, trying to use what we hear to construct some idea of the conceptualization of music that this society holds when its members are not being asked artificially to consider the matter carefully. I had to defend my interest in non-Western music because my friends wondered whether it was actually music. There is a curious disparity in what people include under the heading of music when given time to consider the question (when they exhibit broad tolerance) and what they will accept when giving quick reactions (when they are more narrow-minded). Fieldworkers early on learn this major lesson: They may get one kind of answer when asking a question that would normally have no place in
the culture and another when observing the society’s behavior. And we may note rather different approaches from formal statements by authorities, informal interviews, and observing ordinary
conversations. Of the three, the cocktail party conversation may give us the most reliable perspective of the way urban, middle-class Americans actually use the concept of music in their lives.