Music has its own borders - Why musical styles don't match national or ethnolinguistic categories

Man talks about music while throwing ball at dog.png This video is my attempt at deconstructing one of the most common misconception that beginners in ethnomusicology often fall prey to: the automatic assumption that musical styles are dictated by national, ethnic or linguistic categories. For example, people ask why music from northern Greece is similar to southern Bulgarian music: the implied logic within the question is that music is supposed to line up perfectly with a country's borders, and that as soon as one moves into the borders of another country, the music is supposed to suddenly change completely. Another example is the question: "how come Greek music is similar to Middle-Eastern music, when they are European?" This question implies that music is dictated by the mostly arbitrary, human-made division of Europe/Asia, and also implies that Greek cities right next to the border of Turkey should somehow have more of a similarity with Irish music, also European, than the music right next to them. These two examples overlook the fundamental factor that forms similarity in musical styles: physical proximity. National, ethnolinguistic, continental, religious, or whatever other categorisations are largely, and for the most part, completely irrelevant when it comes to the emergence of similar musical styles. The absurdity of questions like "why do Greek and Turkish music sound similar?" become evident by simply looking at geography: the two countries are right next to one another. That is the simple reason why their music sounds similar. The failure to consider this simple factor leads many people unfamiliar with ethnomusicology to approach similar musical styles with flawed approaches: such as explaining similarities between Kurdish and Serbian music due to a common Indo-European root, completely overlooking how non-Indo-European cultures also have equally similar music, and in the process, implying non-factual ideas of "Indo-European" music, whilst there is no such thing musicologicaly. Musical styles constitute their own category, and have their own geographical zones and borders. These may partially overlap with ethnolinguistic, religious or political borders, but they are not dictated by them, and in approaching musicology, we must not project national or ethnic categories onto it: music has its own borders.