A National Sound Archive by its very nature has a particularly important role to play in the documentation and preservation of traditional music. “Traditional’ is used here to refer to those musical cultures which are primarily unwritten and therefore are passed down through oral tradition; this includes the ‘folk’ music of Europe and the Americas as well as most kinds of music from Africa and Asia. Such music is inadequately preserved through Western notation, which has no symbols for aspects of performance style essential to the understanding of traditional music. The audio recording, on the other hand, captures those aspects, and thus provides the main source of material for the study of traditional music. Without recordings, a large part of the world's musical cultures would be undocumented and probably unknown outside the country of origin. It is the role of a sound archive to acquire, preserve and make available this important and unique resource.