So much for “authorities.” What now do people in a typical American town or city who have not made a specialty of this field consider music to be? I have no systematic surveys to cite, but here’s what I learned from some informal interviews of urban Americans who were not musicians, in the 1960s (Nettl 1963) and the 1980s. They weren’t ready with outright definitions, but when pushed, they appeared to believe that almost any sound is potentially musical. They quickly started telling me what was “good” or “boring” music, and what they liked (see also Russell 1993). It may seem fatuous to point this out, but since some cultures see it differently, music seems to Americans to be innately a “good” thing, and therefore it is probably good for a sound or even silence to be accepted potentially as a component of music. Sounds that are “good” are sounds that may be included in the music concept. Thus the sound of coins about to be paid is “music to my ears,” a person whose speech one likes is said to have a “musical voice,” and a language whose sound one dislikes is called “unmusical.”