Overview

Traditional musicology studies the score (Beethoven’s notes). Ethnomusicology studies the people. It asks: Who plays the music? Who listens? Why do they play it? Is it for a wedding, a funeral, or a protest? It covers everything from Indonesian Gamelan orchestras to hip-hop in the Bronx.

Core Idea

The core idea is music as culture. You cannot understand the music without understanding the culture that produced it. A rain dance song isn’t just a melody; it’s a tool for survival. A punk song isn’t just noise; it’s a political statement.

Formal Definition

The study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It combines the methods of musicology (analysis of sound) and anthropology (ethnography/fieldwork).

Intuition

Imagine listening to a recording of a Tibetan monk chanting. It sounds like a low growl. If you just analyze the sound, you miss the point. You need to know why he is doing it (to vibrate the body and clear the mind for meditation). You need to know the religious context. Ethnomusicology provides that context.

Examples

  • Alan Lomax: The famous folklorist who traveled the US South recording blues and folk songs (like Lead Belly) that would have otherwise been lost. He argued that this “people’s music” was as valuable as high art.
  • Gamelan: The percussion orchestras of Java and Bali. Ethnomusicologists study how the interlocking rhythms reflect the Javanese cultural value of cooperation and communal harmony.
  • Soundscapes: Studying the total sonic environment of a place (e.g., the noise of traffic, the call to prayer, the street vendors) to understand how sound shapes our experience of space.

Common Misconceptions

  • It’s only “World Music”: While it started with non-Western music, today ethnomusicologists study Western classical music too (treating the orchestra as a “tribe” with its own rituals and hierarchy).
  • It’s just preserving old songs: It also studies new music, hybrids, and how globalization changes tradition (e.g., K-Pop).
  • Organology: The study of musical instruments (how they are made, their history, and symbolism).
  • Bi-musicality: The idea (from Mantle Hood) that to truly understand a musical culture, the researcher must learn to play the music, not just observe it.
  • Musicking: Christopher Small’s term emphasizing that music is a verb (an activity), not a noun (an object).

Applications

  • Copyright Law: Helping indigenous peoples protect their traditional songs from being sampled or stolen by pop stars without credit.
  • Education: Bringing multicultural music into the classroom to teach tolerance and global awareness.
  • Music Therapy: Understanding how different cultures use music for healing.

Criticism / Limitations

  • The “Museum” Approach: Early ethnomusicologists sometimes treated cultures as static museums, ignoring how music evolves.
  • Notation: Western musical notation (the staff) is terrible at capturing the nuances (microtones, complex rhythms) of non-Western music.

Further Reading

  • Merriam, Alan P. The Anthropology of Music. 1964.
  • Blacking, John. How Musical Is Man?. 1973.
  • Nettl, Bruno. The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-One Issues and Concepts. 1983.