Ethnomusicological research on music in the urban setting has long recognized the complex nature of the urban environment and the difficulty of defining units of investigation within it. The multivarious networks of social relationships, along with the rapid change and heterogeneity which mark the process of urbanization, have the effect of muddling the relatively clear-cut unit of investigation which ethnomusicologists have dealt with in non-urban areas. One of our goals in conducting research in the urban field is to sort out this intricate web of relationships and heterogeneous elements in order to produce some methodologically sound generalizations about music in the urban environment.