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Section I. Marcus Cato and MeIn Ancient Rome Marcus Cato (234-149 BC), commonly surnamed the Censor, or the Wise, would often speak up in the Senate and, whatever the topic under discussion, he would unfailingly start with words such as 'the City of Carthage must be destroyed' ('Carthago delenda est'). He was obsessed with the idea that Carthage, the great power competing with Rome for dominance in the Mediterranean, should be annihilated. At some point, the Phoenician city was indeed destroyed by the Romans.It is impossible for me to feel strongly about power struggles that took place in antiquity, but I carry an obsession myself, somewhat like Marcus Cato did, and I know what it feels like having one; however, the one I have is, luckily, harmless. Whatever musical topic is put on the table, I cannot help taking it as an opportunity to observe and check whether it offers any good reasons to review, refine or possibly correct our general idea of what 'music' is. That is probably because, already at the beginning of my professional life, I had to completely revise my own concept of music.1 There was a lot of revising to do because my early training took place at the Milan conservatory, the atmosphere of which could not have been more exclusively rooted in the Western tradition, to the exclusion of all others.2 Moreover, in Milan I was indoctrinated to believe in that cluster of Romantic leftovers that still lingers in most conservatories: 'great art is immortal', 'its import is intrinsic to the work itself', 'produced by a genius', 'result of a single creative mind', and so on; they are all residual Romantic attitudes that later, during my doctoral training in sociology and ethnomusicology, I completely rejected. Now I am constantly on guard, ready for clues that may lead me to change my mind once again on concepts and ideas we may uncritically take for granted.3 After all, our understanding of reality is at best incomplete and, therefore, always provisional.The subject of 'laments'-chosen for the ICTM Colloquium that was held at The Australian National University in Canberra in 2011, for which this article was prepared-immediately appeared to me as a wonderful opportunity to cultivate my 'obsession', and venture a few considerations that go a bit beyond the subject itself.Section II. Laments and their Archaic FeaturesThe experience of sorrow is certainly universal. Forms of behaviour meant to express, communicate and share loss and bereavement-with or through organised sound-exist across most cultures, just like other practices where organised sound relates to the life cycle: lullabies, nursery rhymes, love songs, marriage songs, carols, and so on. Early twentieth-century German ethnologists of the Kulturkreislehre School believed forms of sonic behaviour expressing grief and sorrow, along with yodel, healing songs and cattle calls, represent an archaic surviving layer of European (and possibly universal) folklore.4 Kulturkreis theories-never adopted in France, Britain and North America- are today abandoned, given the more culture-specific and historically shorterrange interests of work done today.5 And yet no-one has proved the Kulturkreis approach to be wrong so far. Indeed, laments, yodel, healing songs and cattle calls frequently exhibit a characteristic 'tumbling strain profile' (a gradually descending melodic contour and a 'decrescendo', as the singer runs out of breath) that Curt Sachs, Marius Schneider and Walter Wiora-all of them influenced by the Kulturkreis approach-described as an archaic feature.6 Laments, yodel, healing songs and cattle calls are also usually-at least in the Mediterranean area-made up of few tones (less than five), and their frequent non-strophic character also seems to point to their antiquity. Whether we look at them from a diffusionist (that is, monogenetic) or, on the contrary, a polygenetic outlook, it does not ultimately make any substantial difference, as both would lead us to believe that such widespread cultural traits go back to a past, prior to recorded history. …

Expressing, Communicating, Sharing and Representing Grief and Sorrow with Organised Sound (Musings in Eight Short Segments)