Comparative Musicology And Anthropology Of Music

Non-Aboriginal; based on papers presented at Ideas, Concepts and Personalities in the History of Ethnomusicology conference, Urbana, Illinois, April 1988.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Designed as a tribute to world-renowned ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl, this volume explores the ways in which ethnomusicologists are contributing to the larger task of investigating music history. The fifteen contributors explore topics ranging from meetings with the Suyá Indians of Brazil to the German-speaking Jewish community of Israel; from Indian music in Felicity, Trinidad, to Ravi Shankar's role as cultural mediator. "This book is unique not only for its approach but also for the scope of its content. . . . It is definitely a must for libraries of research centers and institutions with ethnomusicology programs." -- Choice

Explaining that musicality is an essential touchstone of the human experience, a concise introduction to the study of the nature of music, its community and its cultural values explains the diverse work of today's ethnomusicologists and how researchers apply anthropological and other social disciplines to studies of human and cultural behaviors. Original.

In this highly praised and seminal work, Alan Merriam demonstrates that music is a social behavior—one worthy and available to study through the methods of anthropology. In it, he convincingly argues that ethnomusicology, by definition, cannot separate the sound-analysis of music from its cultural context of people thinking, acting, and creating. The study begins with a review of the various approaches in ethnomusicology. He then suggests a useful and simple research model: ideas about music lead to behavior related to music and this behavior results in musical sound. He explains many aspects and outcomes of this model, and the methods and techniques he suggests are useful to anyone doing field work. Further chapters provide a cross-cultural round-up of concepts about music, physical and verbal behavior related to music, the role of the musician, and the learning and composing of music. The Anthropology of Music illuminates much of interest to musicologists but to social scientists in general as well.

"Perspectives on a 21st Century Comparative Musicology : Ethnomusicology or Transcultural Musicology? stems from the 'International Seminars in Ethnomusicology' that F. Giannattasio conceived within the activities of the Intercultural Institute for Comparative Music Studies of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, devoted to a wide reflection on aims, methods and objects of study of ethnomusicology in the light of the profound changes occurring in this field at the beginning of the 21st Century. It concerns a radical rethinking - at a theoretical and epistemological level - of the history of the discipline, due to the contemporary profound transformation of the object of study. The volume has the ambition of offering new views on what a comparative musicology could do in its enquiry into contemporary music making processes. Scholars coming from different parts of the world, and from different fields of study such as W. Welsch, L.-Ch. Koch, T. Rice, S. Feld, J. Guilbault, J-L. Amselle, contributed to the volume presenting theoretical approaches as an implicit or explicit reaction to the theoretical issues presented by Giannattasio. Together with them, some Italian scholars (G. Giuriati, C. Rizzoni, G. Vacca, R. Di Mauro, M. Agamennone, F. Gervasi) present their thoughts drawn from research in two contexts identified as case studies : the area of Naples and its surroundings, and the Salento."--Page 4 de la couverture.

This book was written in the belief that while music is a system of sounds, an assumption that provides the point of departure for most studies of music in culture, it is also a complex of behavior which resonates throughout the whole cultural organism--social organization, esthetic activity, economics, religion. This book is to be distinguished from other studies by its model of music as human action, making this work of interest not only to the ethnomusicologist and anthropologist, but also to those concerned with the nature of music, the nature of man, and the nature of music in human culture. Specifically, this model for the study of ethnomusicology is equally applicable to the study of visual arts, dance, folklore, and literature. --Adapted from dust jacket.