he observes is far more snobbish and insular than the European. In Britain, Mellers and Pleasants were like-minded predecessors, but insofar as he was noticed at all in America it was usually by the likes of radical ethnomusicologist Charles Keil and rock critic Dave Marsh, who first told me about Music of the Common Tongue. Music, Society, Education Id discovered on my own at St. Marks, which is pretty much how Susan McClary came across it shortly after it was published here in the early 80s. McClary was then formulating the deconstruction of music theory that would eventually blossom into the so-called new musicology as well as McClarys MacArthur grant, and she immediately started teaching Smalls book, which both reinforced and influenced her own thinking: Its had a profound effect on the people who have read it--in musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural studies. McClary and her husband, Robert Walser, have become friends of Small--they were vacationing in Sitges when I visited. Together with George Lipsitz, they edit Wesleyan University Presss Music/Culture series, which rescued Smalls first two books from Calder and then spurred him to turn a daunting pile of manuscript fragments into 1998s Musicking.Musicking is calmer than Smalls manifesto or his love child. Far-ranging by conventional musicological standards, its nevertheless the most focused of his books, and also a return to his roots: a step-by-step examination of a symphonic performance, starting in the foyer of the concert hall and building to a meta-analysis of symphonic form and impact, with various preludes, postludes, interludes, and outright afterthoughts and asides along the way. Perhaps due to Wesleyans visibility, its gotten the bulk of its attention in the U.S. In Britain its, Oh, Chris Small, good knockabout stuff but not to be taken seriously, Small says. Its slow at times--theres much about Gregory Batesons antidualistic theory of mind, which provides a theoretical framework the way Ivan Illichs anarchist notions did in Music, Society, Education--but I think its his most powerful book.First theres the term musicking itself, introduced in Music of the Common Tongue to underline Smalls thesis that music is always an activity rather than a thing, but now, promoted as a title, showing up all over McClarys wing of academia and eventually, you bet, journalistic discourse as well. And then theres Smalls climactic point, which is that musics ultimate function isnt to order time, that industrial fallacy, but to provide insight into relationships: between and among notes and chords and rhythms and meters and many other classes of sound, and also musicians and listeners, composers and conductors (not to mention producers and a&r folk, DJs and critics). As Small demonstrates vividly by outlining a few sample secondary and tertiary relationships in numbingly tortuous words, its a very efficient way to embody and sum up relatedness, which is the essence of social if not human life. Thus, music becomes as integral to mental health as music chauvinists are forever claiming it is.Small takes care to define musicking as broadly and kindly as possible. The concept definitely encompasses dancing and listening--a girl with a Walkman is one