[jberryman]

I also came to post this. It's great.

I've got a degree in classical performance (and deeply love and respect that tradition), but more often collaborate musically with people who don't come from that background. Most will say with a little embarrassment that they wish they knew more "music theory". It's difficult to communicate to, say, and indie songwriter how I think theory might help them (to communicate, or analyze their own or others' music), and ways it's probably totally irrelevant (depending on genre, functional harmony is really not very useful).

And that's still just western music traditions. Study Indonesian music and you can see how many ideas about music are encoded even into the notation of western art music.