What in the World is Ethnomusicology?
Did you ever want to know more about music – that thing that is in every culture around the world? Well, I did. So here I am at The College at Brockport studying Anthropology and Music. So of course, everybody wanted to know what I was studying. I would tell them Ethnomusicology, even though there is no formal program at Brockport - yet. Now their next question would be, “Ethno who? What is that?”
According to the Society of Ethnomusicology - yes, there is an organization – “ethnomusicology is the study of music in its cultural context.” It is not only understanding how we make music, but also why we make music. And while we are at it, what is the meaning of music? How is that meaning perceived by us as musicians? How do we as audiences understand the meaning of music? How is music used? Who are the people that make music? What are instruments? Who are the people that make them? (The Society of Ethnomusicology 2013) All of these questions, and more, are explored by ethnomusicologists!
In my mind’s eye, I find myself at a dinner party with a number of music professionals and academics. I was told there would even be a few ethnomusicologists at the party, but I wondered, “How will I find them?” So I start by introducing myself and asking the attendees what they do to see if I can find at least one ethnomusicologist in the crowd. The professors with degrees in ethnomusicology are the easier ones to identify. The others will be a little trickier to spot.
I start to work the room and before I know it I find myself engaged in a conversation with Alexandra Baladina who has spent time establishing a music festival in Macedonia to motivate the young people from different ethnic groups to engage in an intercultural dialog by exploring their own ethnic music (2010). I walk by the hors d'oeuvres and meet Kathleen Van Buren who argues for a more activist oriented ethnomusicological discipline. She talks about her work in Nairobi where she used music as an educational tool for HIV / AIDS education as well as working with established NGOs to use music in a campaign for children’s rights (2010). Then I start to think that ethnomusicologists can work as societal change agents.
I walk away with my plate of veggies and dip and literally bump into Jeff Todd Titon and Rebecca Moore as they are discussing public ethnomusicology. They invite me into their conversation and explain to me that public ethnomusicology is just another term for applied ethnomusicology - which is ethnomusicology done outside of academia (Moore 2013). Titon then shares that he equates fieldwork with public ethnomusicology and sees it as a way to really get to know the people who are being helped by the projects that public ethnomusicologists are trying to support. He views fieldwork as a “model of friendship between people rather than on a model involving antagonism, … or the contemplation of abstract ideas” (Titon 1992: 321). They both see fieldwork as the way to inform the structure of the projects that you implement. I walk away from that conversation being convinced that fieldwork is a critical part of ethnomusicology. Being in the arm chair is not a good way to even understand the music, let alone the people that make it.
As I start to move to another area of the room, Alan P. Merriam joins the discussion. He mentions that ethnomusicology is “in a startling state of flux” (Merriam 1975: 50). That comment makes me hang around with this group a little longer. He informs us that there are a number of people whose work would be debatably called ethnomusicology. The term extends beyond those people who play ethnic music – many of whom are self-taught, but there are some who have been trained in universities where performance is heavily emphasized. But he also identifies music educators as another group of ethnomusicologist who should have a background in “instrumental and vocal world music” (52) including Western music. Merriman goes on to say that Western music should be included because of influence of non-Western music on Western music may cause composer to “produce something new” (53). He also includes professional ethnomusicologist that share their knowledge with educators. Music therapists are another group of practitioners that Merriman considers should be included.
Mind blown! But I want to make sure I talk to as many of the attendees as possible, so I move toward the drinks where I walk into a very lively conversation with, who I have been told, are true pioneers in ethnomusicology. Whenever someone starts a conversation with “back in the day,” I perk up because I know I will get a sense of history. Benjamin I. Gilman starts off telling us newbies that in the early days – before the term ethnomusicology was even coined – musicologists tended toward comparing the exotic music heard on their voyages around the world. In most places visited, you would notice that there was no harmony and that the music is isotonic rather than diatonic. You would hear each instrument playing on its own – “neither in unison nor in parts” (Gilman 1909: 533). He goes on to say that listening to some of the music, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish the tonic, some of the rhythms would be more complicated than you have ever heard before. He tells us our “European mind [cannot] obtain a clear conception” (534) of the melody.
That’s when Willard Rhodes chimes in with how we needed to develop a methodology to even describe what we are hearing. Our work in the “systematization of the discipline” became the “foundation of [this] science” (Rhodes 1956: 459). He was advocating for attracting more students to the field. Rhodes goes on to say that there was a time when we needed to “enlist more workers in ethnomusicology and gain a wider interest and support … among all those who find in man’s music an expression of his thoughts and feelings” (457). When I ask him about his thoughts on the evolution of ethnomusicology over his lifetime, he says we have gone from comparative musicology to ethnographic, that is analyzing and describing the “music of an ethnic group in its cultural setting” (459). To that he adds that the invention of the phonograph was pivotal in allowing the collection of a large body of work that could not only be studied, but also preserved as cultures change.
As the evening was winding down, I was able to catch the end of a conversation between Timothy Rice as he and Merriam were discussing the relative merits of their respective models and how they can be used together to provide a way of discussing and comparing “formative processes that operate in many cultures”. It seems plausible that for example, as I heard them discuss, that Rice’s model, combined with that of Merriam, is able to increase the inter-connectedness of other disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and psychology (Rice 1987: 480).
So now, in real life, the real question remains, what does ethnomusicology mean today? I say it is exploring the music of all people – understanding why, how and under what circumstances people create it. And once it is created how music can be used to the pleasure and the betterment of society.
Works Cited
Balandina, Alexandra. 2010. "Music and conflict transformtion in the post-Yugoslav era: Empowering youth to develop harmonic inter-ethnic relationships in Kumanovo, Macedonia." International Journal of Community Music 3 (2): 229-244.
Gilman, Benjamin I. 1909. "The Science of Exotic Music." Science 30: 532-535.
Merriam, Alan P. 1975. "Ethnomusicology Today." Current Musicology 20: 50-66.
Moore, Rebekah E. 2013. "Work in the Field: Public Ethnomusicology and Collaborative Professionalism." Collaborative Anthropologies 6.
Rhodes, Willard. 1956. "Toward a Definition of Ethnomusicology." American Anthropologist 58: 457-463.
Rice, Timothy. 1987. "Toward the Remodeling of Ethnomusicology." Ethnomusicology (University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society of Ethnomusicology) 31 (3): 469-488.
The Society of Ethnomusicology. 2013. What is Ethnomusicology. Accessed November 28, 2015. http://www.ethnomusicology.org/?page=whatisethnomusicol.
Titon, Jeff Todd. 1992. "Music, the Public Interest, and the Practice of Ethnomusicology." Ethnomusicology, special issue on music, the public interest, and the practice of ethnomusicology 36 (3): 315-322.
VanBuren, Kathleen L. 2010. "Applied Ethnomusicology and HIV and AIDS: Responsibility, Ability, and Action." Ethnomusicology (University of Illinois Press on Behalf of Society of Ethnomusicology) 54 (2): 202-223.
