>How would Hindus feel if they know about this 'Mantra Girl' deal? Would they be upset that ancient mantras have been done to techno music, of all things? I've heard of Welsh musicians setting old Welish lyrics to new music (and old music to new words), and it's the same thing. What's your opinion on this? I'm not talking about simply giving a song a new *arragement*, I mean putting it to a different style of music altogether. If a song's old enough, does that mean it's in the public domain and anybody can just do whatever they want to it? If that's the case, it doesn't seem right at all to me.

Personal tastes aside, yes, you can do anything you want to a song that's out of copyright or was never in it to begin with. More than this, before formally composed music came along, that's the way *all* music worked. You may have noticed that folk songs turn up in a staggering amount of different versions. If you look up the lyrics to any folk song that's more than a hundred years old or so, you'll get so many different versions it will drive you nuts. The idea that a particular piece has fixed value is relatively new in music. Similarly, the scores for baroque music were often written as a sort of base, upon which the performers were expected to embellish and ornament at will.

However, I tend to agree with you that just because something's legal it doesn't necessarily *feel* ethical. I have to admit a lot of this is about my personal tastes, though. It KILLS me to hear a much-loved piece of classical music mixed into the background of some techno-pop atrocity, in much the same way that I would gladly pay for the deaths of advertising people who take some composer's masterpiece and ensure that two million people will henceforth think of singing tinned peas every time they try to listen to it.

> I was also wondering if it's even ethical to listen to this CD, because techno or not, they are hindu mantras that I don't understand and are most likely religious. Of course, I listen to my Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack all the time and I don't speak Elvish, but they're not real and don't seem to have a different religion (in fact, Tolkien's Elves don't seem to have *any* religion, but that's another subject, and I've only just started 'Two Towers' so I'm no expert on Tolkien anyway). I can't help but feel that it's somehow wrong for an 'outsider' to listen to a certain religion's music. Or does it just not matter again, and anybody can listen to anything they want?

I guess that depends on whether you mean from YOUR point of view, or the people whose religion it is. If it's music from some religion where sacred music would normally be forbidden to the ears of unbelievers, AND if it's a religion which is still practised today, then I'd say it's wrong for somebody to use it commercially, for obvious reasons.

If you mean, is it personally wrong for you to listen to sacred music from a religion other than your own, I guess this is up to your own beliefs. The way I see it: either you believe other religions are based on fallacy (in which case their sacred music isn't really sacred, therefore you can listen to it), or you believe other religions are true but evil (in which case you shouldn't listen to their music), or you believe other religions are true and as good as your own (in which case it doesn't matter). QED.

Brunnen-"elves have TONS of religion"G