What is ethnomusicology?

An excellent book of ethnomusicology case studies, Worlds of Music.

It occurs to me that most people are unfamiliar with ethnomusicology, which is the discipline in which my project is based; so I’m going to devote this post to a brief explanation of the field, and a bit about how and why I came to love it.

I’ve been performing classical music since an early age. Starting with piano lessons at age seven and oboe at twelve, I was well-versed in the culture of classical Western music (known as musicology) by the time I entered high school.

But I was always fascinated with ‘the other’. Growing up in a fairly homogenous white Minnesota suburb, my eye was often caught by exotic bits and pieces of other cultures, and especially their music. At fourteen I had a growing collection of panpipes and ocarinas; by sixteen I was spending more time with local Ecuadorian street bands than going to football games.

Other kinds of music fascinated me because I didn’t understand them. I knew how to read notes on a staff and play them on a piano or an oboe; I didn’t know how shehnai or mbira players did the same. Unfortunately I didn’t know anyone who shared this interest, and it largely went unsatisfied.

It wasn’t until I was studying oboe performance and classical theory at a small university in California that my world opened up. The school had recently hired a professor to teach programmes in world music. This is where I first heard the term ‘ethnomusicology‘, and it was a wonderful revelation that my interest had a name, let alone its own field of study. It took me two semesters to rally enough students to even hold the class, but I was finally able to take it, which was part of the reason I decided to move to South Africa.

So… what is ethnomusicology?

Ethnomusicology is defined in several different, increasingly specific ways: as the study of music as an aspect of culture; the study of the music of different cultures; and the study of traditional and non-Western music.

A quick overview of the Slobin-Titon Music Culture Outline breaks it down into categories:

1. Ideas About Music – Shared ideas about music within a particular culture, including things like aesthetics, context, and sociopolitical significance.

2. Social Organisation of Music – Shared understanding of how music functions within a specific culture, including the assignment of roles and hierarchies.

3. Repertoires of Music – What the culture considers to be music, regarding mechanics like pitch elements, time and rhythm elements, text, dance,  and composition.

4. Material Culture – Physical objects used in making music. This all sounds rather clinical, but is a good framework for understanding the discipline.

At its most basic form, ethnomusicology is essentially the bridge between anthropology and musicology, however it combines aspects of philosophy, psychology, religion and folklore, and aspects of many other fields of study.

What I love about ethnomusicology is that it teaches you new ways of thinking. Looking at a piece of music from this perspective strips away all your preconceptions, your personal tastes and opinions, and judges music solely based on what it’s trying to be. It shows you how to look for the elements that make something up, so you can find an understanding of something you don’t know. I wish everyone knew how to do that.