Ethnomusicology   Tags: cultural anthropology, ethnic music, music, musicology  

Dutch musicologist Jaap Kunst coined the term “ethno-musicology” in 1950. Kunst, who had a particular interest in Indonesian music, sought to define a distinct discipline that would cover the study of all types of traditional and folk music as well as the “art music” of non-Western civilizations. This wide definition posed some difficulty in determining what sort of musical study may be included under ethnomusicology, and has been so expanded by some scholars to include all sounds produced by human beings.

The term is also inherently European-biased, as the idea of “ethnic” usually (though not always) referred to music of non-European origins. Though the exact definition of ethnomusicology is still under debate, contemporary usage has shifted slightly to include all types of culturally or socially-relevant music, and is generally considered a different field of study from the development of the “art music” of civilizations with long musical traditions like the upper classes of Western Europe, China and India.

Willard Rhodes, Founder of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), described ethnomusicology as a blending of the methods of cultural anthropology and musicology, “a stepchild of both parents, a second class citizen of the social sciences and the humanities.” 1 Thus, ethnomusicologists struggled with an unwieldy scope and suffered from an association with the quasi-science of anthropology, itself a very young discipline. Ethnomusicology was not only the sphere of adventurous academics, however. Composers trained in the Western European traditions were also seeking new inspirations, whether from afar or from their own backyard.

Eastern Europe and Russia provided a wealth of “ethnic” music for Western-European trained composers to explore and integrate with their own work. Nationalist music, particularly in Russia, was not only popular but mandated, though the interpretation of what constituted national music was necessarily vague and changeable, and the purposes of politicians and composers were seldom in absolute accord. The study of different rhythmic patterns and tonal systems interested composers who were challenging the basic assumptions of how harmony and rhythm “should” work.

In other parts of the world, Europeans had been intensively studying the music of South Asia since the late 19th Century. Such interest spread, in the wake of economic colonial interests, to other regions in Africa, America, and Southeast Asia. As with early anthropology, the early methodologies, interests and assumptions can seem somewhat haphazard today, but these laid the groundwork for future research in these regions.

An important development in popularizing world music was the invention of recording technology. Composer Bela Bartok was intrigued by traditional Hungarian folksong, and used wax cylinders to make recordings during his field expeditions, in the early 1900s. As recording technology improved in quality and portability, the accessibility of folk music from all over the world raised interest in and appreciation of non-Western music not only in musicians and scholars, but in the general population.

Ethnomusicology began to take its place in academia, and shift its focus slightly, from the 1960s. Musicologists such as Mantle Hood and Bruno Nettl contributed to furthering the study of ethnomusicology and developing frameworks for research methodology, fieldwork and the development of ethnomusicology programmes. Today, established programmes train new musicologists and anthropologists, who explore an ever-widening circle of interest areas.

1 Shelemay, Kay Kaufman (Ed.). (1992). Ethnomusicology: history, definitions, and scope: a core collection of scholarly articles. New York :Garland. p. 33