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In 1956 the hyphen was removed with ideological intent to signify the discipline's validity and independence from the fields of musicology and anthropology. These changes to the field's name paralleled its internal shifts in ideological and intellectual emphasis.
The name change signaled another shift in the field: ethnomusicology moved away from studying the origins, evolution, and comparison of musical practices, and toward thinking of music as one of many human activities, like religion, language, and food. In short, the field became more anthropological.
Thus, ethnomusicology contrasted the field of conventional musicology where the primary focus was on Western art music. Early in its existence, ethnomusicology was known as "comparative musicology," which established Western musical traditions as the standard to which all other kinds of music were compared.
It was known as comparative musicology until about 1950, when the term ethnomusicology was introduced simultaneously by the Dutch scholar of Indonesian music Jaap Kunst and by several American scholars, including Richard Waterman and Alan Merriam. In the period after 1950, ethnomusicology burgeoned at academic institutions.
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Nov 21, 2023 · Updated: 11/21/2023. Table of Contents. What is Ethnomusicology? History of Ethnomusicology. Theories of Ethnomusicology. Lesson Summary. FAQs. Activities. What is the purpose of...
Feb 12, 2019 · Overall, since changing its name from comparative musicology to ethnomusicology during the middle of the 20th century, the field has largely avoided discussion of musical evolution, and recent ...
When Jaap Kunst suggested a new name for the enterprise after the war, it caught on immediately, especially in the United States. The combination of anthropological and musicological study in the new disciplinary name captured the imagination of a group of four American anthropologists and musicologists: Charles Seeger (1886–1979), Willard ...
