Why do I need alut?

I have created this program which isn't quite working so I won't post the code. But in an older version that did work whenever I got rid of the '#include <al/alut.h>' line and the alutExit and alutInit calls. It would stop working. I was making my program off the basis of a tutorial example code that had alutLoadWAVFile & alutUnloadWAV calls and seeming that I got rid of them (i.e. I am not using a wav file anymore) I thought I could get rid of the alut stuff. Everything compiles fine with the alut stuff but when I run my program no sound comes out. It's a pretty basic program that just sets up buffers, sources and listeners and then provides some basic play/pause/stop playback controls. At the moment I just keep the alutExit & alutInit calls in and it runs fine but I'm interested in getting rid of them cause then I assume I can get rid of alut.dll with my program. I just don't know why I have to include them.

Any help appreciated,
Ben Pazolli