A study of folk music of many lands and cultures, including primarily China, the Middle East, India, Africa, Java, Japan, Polynesia, the Caribbean, Russia, the Americas (including Bluegrass), and touching on other musical traditions in our one big global village. Common themes to be compared and contrasted in the above musical demography are communication, recreation, religious rites, expression, symbolic structures, ethnic identity, and many other uses of folk music in society.