Sounds of the Magic South

We have connected the Music of the South with low-class entertainers, but this gives only one side of the picture. Time and again, both in the early literature and in folktales, sweet music is revealed to be one of the essential attributes of the Other World. Its sound often heralds the approach of the supernatural, and by means of it the sid-folk place men and women under enchantment.

... In China "right behavior" Li and music ... are contrasted: "Li is of the order of earth ... music was made manifest in the genesis of all things, and Li has an abode in their completion." It is a supernatural belief that words have a creative power; they symbolize the manifest world. Music, on the other hand, brings us into harmony with the non-manifest, and "to understand music is to understand the secret source of Li"

-- Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage