I am delighted with the manner in which these three papers have dealt with the social and political relevance of sculpture, folklore, and music. This is no startlingly new discovery. It has been recognized before by those interested in the arts, but it has been largely ignored by those who specialize in social and political studies. The contributors to this panel are to be congratulated for their documentation of this function of the arts, and our chairman deserves special recognition for this attempt to bring it to the attention of those who so often overlook it.

The panelists have stressed the lessons to be learned by the social scientists, but I wonder if there is not one for the humanists as well. The fact that artists are often rebels against thestatus quo is a truism in our society, but the significance of the arts as a medium of social and political action, and of change, is often ignored although similar examples can be found in Africa today as well as in the history of other societies.

Where does this leave our conventional definitions of art as aesthetic expression, as creativity, as “art for art's sake,” as concern with form for its own sake, or as elaboration beyond the point of utility? All these, I fear, underevaluate the socio-political utility of art which these papers have demonstrated in their different fields.