I would love to be able to sight-read music notation. I can't. Canadian culture has not fallen apart because of that. Is being able to read a good thing? DOH, yes! Absolutely necessary? No.

The purpose of notation is to preserve the music or allow people who share no language in common to play together. But the oral tradition has done that quite well. It would have been better, imo, had many societies that had or have no written tradition actually had one. Here I'm thinking of the Cree or Inuit, and what's left of the old days has been passed on orally. Most of our way-back ancestors didn't know how to either read or write. We have lost so much. Then people went out with their tape recorders--not just their memories--and indeed did some permanent preservations. That's a good thing, imo.