The Musical Ear: Oral Tradition in the USA provides a wide-ranging look at the role played by music that is passed on orally without the use of notation, in the folk, popular and art musics of North America. Professor McLucas argues that without the broad underlying oral repertoire of folk music, many musical styles - from that of the eighteenth-century singing schools to the minstrel tunes of Foster, the orchestral music of Copland and the jazz compositions of Armstrong and Ellington - would not possess their distinctive rhythmic and melodic content. Without the strong processes of oral...