The Vernacular Music Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, is a center for in-depth and comparative research, study, teaching and advocacy on behalf of the world's vernacular musics and dance. The Center was founded at Texas Tech in the Fall of 2000 under Executive Director Dr Christopher J Smith. The VMC states that it "engages with folk music, traditional music and dance from around the world: vernacular idioms that are learned, taught, shared, and passed-on by ear and in the memory." The term "vernacular" is employed in its title in order to allude to "vernacular languages"—those languages used for commonplace communication—and in order to avoid potentially limiting terms such as "folk," "traditional," or "non-Western."