<strong>Ethnomusicology: All about this branch of cultural studies</strong>
Ethnomusicology is a branch of cultural studies that deals with music. In other words, it is the study of music as part of a larger culture. It deals with why and how humans make music and is therefore often regarded as the anthropology of music. While anthropology is the study of human behaviour, ethnomusicology is the study of the music humans create.
Origin and history of ethnomusicology
The discipline of ethnomusicology originated in the 1950s but was then known as comparative musicology. The term ‘ethnomusicology’ was coined by Dutch musicologist Jaap Kunst by combining two disciplines, namely: ‘musicology’ or the study of music and ‘ethnology’ or the comparative study of distinct cultures. In 1955, musicologist Charles Seeger, and anthropologist Alan Merriam collaborated to establish the ‘Society for Ethnomusicology’ and the journal ‘Ethnomusicology’ was launched in 1958.
It emerged as a field of study dealing with different musical features from diverse global cultures, including the origins and evolutions of different musical practices. In fact, when musicology was founded in 1885 by Austrian scholar Guido Adler, he had already categorised the discipline into historical musicology (emphasises on European classical music) and comparative musicology.
What are the primary areas of research in ethnomusicology?
Ethnomusicology deals with a plethora of topics in music across the globe. It is often regarded as the study of non-Western or world music, in contrast to musicology that deals with the Western European classical music.
The primary areas of research in ethnomusicology are ethnography (immersive fieldwork within a given culture), folklore music, contemporary music (such as pop, rap, salsa, rock etc.) to music associated with royalty. Ethnomusicology also deals with dissemination of music from one place to another and classification of musical instruments and systems.
As the field of ethnomusicology evolved, it shifted its focus from origin, evolution and comparison of musical practices to treating music as one of several human activities, such as language, food and religion. Ethnomusicology became the study of music as a dynamic process that is affected by the larger societal structure.
With the advent of 20th century, ethnomusicology further shifted its focus to music composition and how it is directly interconnected with other contemporary issues such as globalisation, migration, technology, media, and social conflict among others. At present, ethnomusicology is studied alongside related disciplines, like linguistics, sociology, anthropology and cultural geography.