The New Ethno Musicologies

A collection of essays which address and critically examine issues in contemporary ethnomusicology. It explores ethnomusicology's shifting disciplinary relationships and plots a range of potential developments for its future

This booklet hardly needs a preface; the contents, I think, speak for themselves. It contains a short and carefully brought up to date resume of all that I, as a private University Lecturer in Amsterdam, have tried to teach my pupils. It is intended as a general introduction to ethnomusicology, before going on to the study of the forms of separate music-cultures. I sincerely hope that those, who wish to teach themselves and to qualify in this branch of knowledge, will find a satisfactory basis for self tuition in the matter here brought together. Regarding the possibility of a new edition, any critical remarks or infor mation as to possible desiderata would be very gratefully received. J. K. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION My request for critical remarks and desiderata has not been ignored. My sincere thanks to all who took the trouble to let me know what they missed in my booklet. Through their collaboration the contents have undergone a considerable improvement and enlargement as compared to the original edition issued in 1950 by the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, under the title 'Musicologica'. I have taken care to add many particulars from non-European sources, with the result that now the book is no longer so Europe-centric as it was.

Although all research makes use of specific research methods, much music scholarship is being published without any reference to, or reflection on, the premises of the methods employed. In other words, published articles and books are often lacking a discussion of the scope and limitations of the research methods. Furthermore, music theory, musicology, ethnomusicology, music psychology, etc., are not independent disciplines, nor is research in those areas an activity to be defined once and for all. These areas have strong methodological relationships to each other as well as to areas outside the field of music. This book discusses some of the methodological premises, on which music research in the areas of music theory, (ethno-) musicology, and music psychology is based, and focuses on selected interdisciplinary approaches. It also discusses teaching approaches to music theory.

Where is the academic study of music today, and what paths should it take into the future? Should we be looking at how music relates to society and constructs meaning through it, rather than how it transcends the social? Can we ‘remix’ our discipline and attempt to address all musics on an equal basis, without splitting ourselves in advance into subgroups of ‘musicologists’, ‘theorists’, and ‘ethnomusicologists’? These are some of the crucial issues that Nicholas Cook has raised since he emerged in the 1990s as one of the UK’s leading and most widely read voices in critical musicology. In this book, collaborators and former students of Cook pursue these questions and others raised by his work—from notation, historiography, and performance to the place of music in multimedia forms such as virtual reality and video games, analysing both how it can bring people together and the ways in which it has failed to do so.

How does the immediate experience of musical sound relate to processes of meaning construction and discursive mediation? This question lies at the heart of the studies presented in Experience and Meaning in Music Performance, a unique multi-authored work that both draws on and contributes to current debates in a wide range of disciplines, including ethnomusicology, musicology, psychology, and cognitive science. Addressing a wide range of musical practices from Indian raga and Afro-Brazilian Congado rituals to jazz, rock, and Canadian aboriginal fiddling, the coherence of this study is underpinned by its three main themes: experience, meaning, and performance. Central to all of the studies are moments of performance: those junctures when sound and meaning are actually produced. Experience-what people do, and what they feel, while engaging in music-is equally important. And considered alongside these is meaning: what people put into a performance, what they (and others) get out of it, and, more broadly, how discourses shape performances and experiences of music. In tracing trajectories from moments of musical execution, this volume a novel and productive view of how cultural practice relates to the experience and meaning of musical performance. A model of interdisciplinary study, and including access to an array of audio-visual materials available on an extensive companion website, Experience and Meaning in Music Performance is essential reading for scholars and students of ethnomusicology and music psychology.

The first edition of this book, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts, has become a classic in the field. This revised edition, written twenty-two years after the original, continues the tradition of providing engagingly written analysis that offers the most comprehensive discussion of the field available anywhere. This book looks at the field of ethnomusicology--defined as the study of the world's musics from a comparative perspective, and the study of all music from an anthropological perspective--as a field of research. Nettl selects thirty-one concepts and issues that have been the subjects of continuing debate by ethnomusicologists, and he adds four entirely new chapters and thoroughly updates the text to reflect new developments and concerns in the field. Each chapter looks at its subject historically and goes on to make its points with case studies, many taken from Nettl's own field experience. Drawing extensively on his field research in the Middle East, Western urban settings, and North American Indian societies, as well as on a critical survey of the available literature, Nettl advances our understanding of both the diversity and universality of the world's music. This revised edition's four new chapters deal with the doing and writing of musical ethnography, the scholarly study of instruments, aspects of women's music and women in music, and the ethnomusicologist's study of his or her own culture.

Historical ethnomusicology is increasingly acknowledged as a significant emerging subfield of ethnomusicology due to the fact that historical research requires a different set of theories and methods than studies of contemporary practices and many historiographic techniques are rapidly transforming as a result of new technologies. In 2005, Bruno Nettl observed that “the term ‘historical ethnomusicology’ has begun to appear in programs of conferences and in publications” (Nettl 2005, 274), and as recently as 2012 scholars similarly noted “an increasing concern with the writing of musical histories in ethnomusicology” (Ruskin and Rice 2012, 318). Relevant positions recently advanced by other authors include that historical musicologists are “all ethnomusicologists now” and that “all ethnomusicology is historical” (Stobart, 2008), yet we sense that such arguments—while useful, and theoretically correct—may ultimately distract from careful consideration of the kinds of contemporary theories and rigorous methods uniquely suited to historical inquiry in the field of music. In Theory and Method in Historical Ethnomusicology, editors Jonathan McCollum and David Hebert, along with contributors Judah Cohen, Chris Goertzen, Keith Howard, Ann Lucas, Daniel Neuman, and Diane Thram systematically demonstrate various ways that new approaches to historiography––and the related application of new technologies––impact the work of ethnomusicologists who seek to meaningfully represent music traditions across barriers of both time and space. Contributors specializing in historical musics of Armenia, Iran, India, Japan, southern Africa, American Jews, and southern fiddling traditions of the United States describe the opening of new theoretical approaches and methodologies for research on global music history. In the Foreword, Keith Howard offers his perspective on historical ethnomusicology and the importance of reconsidering theories and methods applicable to this field for the enhancement of musical understandings in the present and future.