tended to the incorporation of eastern music gestures in western music idioms (Taylor 1997). Additionally, the minimalists use of electronic and real-time performance was the essence of more progressive forms of rock music from the late 1960s to mid 1970s.

In these terms, the basis of a generic neo-world music as style was well established before the advent of digital technology, but the genre has moved well beyond this in the digital realm. The combination of live performers, real-time effects, and the use of material that crosses cultural and geographical boarders is becoming increasingly common. The collapse of the division between what was popular and art music, new and old languages, sound processing and pitch/duration paradigms is found in aspects of the eclectic stylistic synthesis of increasing numbers of younger composers works (Downs 1993, Pebbles 1996, Frykberg 1998). These point to this alternative paradigm, and extend Gabriel’s pioneering work.

This approach provides a solution to the language redundancy of popular music and the audience alienation of extreme modernism. New works include a wide range of gestures: environmental, interaction between performers, technological, cultural and mechanical. By a concentration on sound as communication rather than exclusive innovation, reflexivity and continuity become balancing concerns and fragments of the past fertile ground for the creative imagination. (Milicevic 1998, Turner 1995, Whalley 1997).

The musical problems arising are significant; many of which are outlined in this discussion. The use of new technology, techniques, languages and sound metaphors not only brings complexity of authorship to neo-world music, but also interpretative relativism (Frith 1996). At the extreme of this practice is the post-modern notion of the divorcing of author from text and ascribing text with multiple meanings and no dominant one. The danger of making all things possible is the risk of endless confusion through empty parody (Erlmann 1996, Manuel 1995) where the untalented and technically limited assume artistic credibility through arguments of cultural relativity.

Yet when grounded in traditional performance based musicianship as a basis for composition, however ideological this may appear, a continuity of artistic judgement is retained (Turner 1995). This is based on the simple premise that a good composer/performer with an original idea can come up with expressive music with very limited or very advanced technical resources: musical tools may facilitate musical ideas, but will not provide them.

Conclusion

If there is a successful continuity in western music it is real-time melodic performance and rhythmic repetition as the basis for musical expression, communication and structure, regardless of the mode of authorship or source. The removal of these elements negates an experiential connection to the body, the primary medium of this continuity. Historically, few composers were not also adept performers of music. Performance experience provided the substance of musical communication and the means of learning it. As such, the physical limitations of acoustic instruments and personal effort required to make music with them formed the basis of musical