The first impact of a foreign music seems to be sensual and emotional rather than intellectual; it is sound alone that attracts or repels. Mantle Hood, a composer as well as a musicologist, says of his own first exposure to Javanese gamelan that "the unique orchestral color caught my immediate interest".Reports by travelers, for most part nonmusicians, indicate that laymen have the same initial reaction. Here are a few quotes concerning Thai music, the first from the seventeenth century