Siamese music...

So what have I been reading lately? I'm almost embarrassed to admit to browsing through the music criticism of George Bernard Shaw. Opinionated and even bigoted stuff. But terribly funny. Take this for example...its enough to give an ethnomusicologist apoplexy:

The Court band of the King Of Siam, which plays certain compositions that have been handed down by aural tradition and have never, it is said, been committed to writing, plays occasionally at the Albert Hall. Their performance, though most of the visitors find it merely outlandish, is not wholly beyond the range of Western Sympathy. Some of the airs and instrumental effects are not unpleasant. The Siamese scale contains no leading note, and the attempts to play God Save The Queen and other European airs are rather trying in consequence, but they succeed better with Scotch airs such as Auld Lang Syne, which is very like their own Pegu Affliction. But a little of the Siamese music goes, it must be confessed, a very long way.

So much for Siamese music...