THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF MUSIC

Music has accompanied the development of every stage of human society since prehistoric times, reflecting the beliefs, problems, utopias and every type of meaning and thought that is part of a civilization. This presence and its impact throughout our evolution have turned it into the first subject of study for many areas of knowledge such as socio-musicology, psycho-musicology, musicology and ethnomusicology, where answers to many questions are meant to be found by means of researching every relationship of music with mankind and society, making the function of music itself one of the most important questions.

Ethnomusicology, 2001

I. Ethnomusicology, Ethnographic Method, and "Non-Western" Music In an introduction to a special issue of the Journal of the American Musicological Society (JAMS) published in 1995, Regula Qureshi discussed the relationship between anthropology, history, and a broader musicology that includes ethnomusicology. Qureshi characterizes the "anthropologizing of music history," the primary and most productive relationship to date of anthropology and historical musicology, as beginning with "a recasting of the musical product into the realm of experience" (Qureshi 1995:335). The four essays that follow Qureshi's introduction interrogate music in culture through highlighting the notions of "dialogue, de-essentializing, and difference" (Qureshi 1995:339). Indeed, the specialJAMS issue builds on historical musicology's growing engagement with a range of anthropological theories that have served to enliven and enrich the musicological palette, forecast earlier in writings by Tomlinson (1984) and Treitler (1989). Ethnomusicologists, of course, have drawn freely on anthropology; indeed, they have spent much of the second half of the twentieth century trying to remake their own discipline in its image. To note just a few milestones, one might cite Merriam's Anthropology of Music (1964), Alan Lomax's Cantometrics (1976), Timothy Rice's remodeling of ethnomusicological theory (1987) based on readings of Clifford Geertz, and Mark Slobin's schema for transnational musics (1993) which draws upon Arjun Appardurai's notion of "ethnoscapes" (Appadurai 1990). Ethnomusicological research and writing have further interacted closely with a number of different streams of anthropological thought, ranging from structuralism, to symbolic, linguistic, and reflexive anthropology. While none of these efforts has resulted in a new theory that moves beyond its anthropological model, there have been, particularly recently, a number of increasingly nuanced case studies. Yet there is one area allied to anthropology in which ethnomusicologists alone have innovated. I have earlier suggested (Shelemay 1996b) that the domain of ethnographic method is where ethnomusicologists have most successfully and creatively occupied a disciplinary space midway between anthropology and musical scholarship. One is tempted to dub this a true "anthromusicology." But since terminology is already so problematic, I will draw instead on a distinction made over a decade ago by Anthony Seeger (1987). While historical musicologists are now beginning to participate actively in an "anthropology of music," bringing the "concepts, methods, and concerns of anthropology" to studies of music history, ethnomusicologists have in the meantime moved much more aggressively toward what Seeger has termed a "musical anthropology," exploring the way[s] "musi

Ethnomusicology Forum, 2011

Current Musicology, 1997

The New (Ethno)musicologies, 2008

Over the last twenty years a range of radical developments have revolutionised Musicology – leading certain practitioners to describe their discipline as ‘New’. What has happened to Ethnomusicology during this time? Do its theories, methodologies and values remain rooted in the 1970s and 1980s or has it also transformed? What directions might or should it take in the new millenium? With contributions from a number of key figures in Ethnomusicology and related disciplines, this volume explores Ethnomusicology’s shifting relationship to other disciplines and to its own ‘mythic’ history, and plots a range of potential developments for its future. It also considers perspectives on Ethnomusicology from ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the ‘discipline’, and its broader contribution and relevance beyond the academy. In a period of particular dynamism and intense technological change, when Music departments, in the UK at least, are increasingly opening their doors to Ethnomusicologists, and valuing the types of skills and approaches they offer, such reflection is particularly timely. In many respects, this volume also offers a European perspective; one that provides some interesting and refreshing contrasts from the North American discourses and institutional dynamics that have tended to dominate Ethnomusicology since the 1950s.

Toward a Sound Ecology, 2020

Ethnomusicology is the study of people making music. People make sounds that are recognized as music, and people also make “music” into a cultural domain. This 1989 conference paper defined ethnomusicology and contrasted music as a contingent cultural category with earlier scientific definitions that essentialized music as an object. It was published for the first time in Musicology Annual (2015). Here it is as reprinted, with a new introduction, in my book Toward a Sound Ecology: New and Selected Essays (Indiana University Press, 2020). The book is available from IU Press, the usual online sources, and your favorite independent bookstore.

Etnoantropološki Problemi, 2019

With the idea of popularizing the study of music in the local anthropological community, the national academic conference Anthropology of music was held at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, on March 23, 2018. At the conference, 24 papers were presented. In the second and fourth issues of the journal Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology for the year 2018 thirteen papers were published from the above-mentioned conference. In this thematic issue we publish third and last part of articles concerning music: Ana Banić Grubišić and Nina Kulenović – Turbotronik – on the Border between the Local Music Scene and a Genre in the Making; Nina Kulenović and Ana Banić Grubišić – "Turbo-folk rocks!": new readings of turbo-folk; Marija Ajduk – Representing the Yugoslav New Wave in the Documentary Film "The New Wave in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a Social Movement"; Ana Dajić and Sonja Radivojević – Radio "On the Cloud": New Author Approaches in C...

Music, individuals and contexts: dialectical interaction, 2019, ISBN 978-88-32932-64-5, págs. 1-8, 2019

Volume realizzato con il patrocinio dell'Associazione "Ricerca Continua. Alumni Lettere e Filosofi a Tor Vergata"

This compilation of articles resulting from papers given on the occasion of three different seminars in three consecutive years from 2013 to 2015 (Perspectives on an 21st Century Comparative Musicology: Ethnomusicology or Transcultural Musicology?; Living Music: Case Studies and New Research Prospects, and Musical Traditions in Archives, Patrimonies, and New Creativities) is an interesting mixture of very updated and at the same time well-grounded insights into the core problems of a discipline that starts to question itself: Ethnomusicology or transcultural musicology? It is not by accident that the title of the first conference is also the general topic of the publication, whether there are sections on local music practices, historical research activities or general anthropology. The central question seems to be the denial of purity in cultures and the consequences for anything ethnomusicology has achieved so far.