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Why did musicology change from comparative to ethnomusicology?
Who invented ethnomusicology?
What is ethnomusicology anthropology?
Why is ethnomusicology so important today?
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.
Comparative musicology, the primary precursor to ethnomusicology, emerged in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Eventually, this term fell out of use in the 1950s as critics for the practices associated with the field became more vocal about ethnomusicology's distinction from musicology. [14]
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.
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.
One theory, borrowed from German ethnologists of the period and known as “culture-circle theory,” used distribution studies to claim that the more widespread a form was, the older it was.
Some of the important questions in ethnomusicology can be traced to ancient Greek philosophers, Muslim scholars, and Enlightenment philosophers, but the invention of the wax cylinder recorder by Thomas Edison in 1877 had a definitive impact on the formation and development of the field.
Ethnomusicology is the study of music in its social and cultural contexts. Ethnomusicologists examine music as a social process in order to understand what music is and what it means to its practitioners and audiences. Ethnomusicology is highly interdisciplinary. Individuals working in the field may have training in music, sound studies ...
