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UPDATED: 2/2/2012
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UNDERSTANDING WORLD MUSIC
by Dr. S A K Durga
Ethnomusicology, the study of world music, is a
branch of musicology. This discipline developed after World War II in
Western
countries with a special emphasis on the
inter-disciplinary approach to music. Like any
other academic field, which is being created and recreated through
research,writings
and teaching, Ethnomusicology also had many
variations in concepts, interpretations and
applications.
The discipline Ethnomusicology branched out of
musicology because of the ardent desire of many Western musicologists
to
study non-western music that had passed on from generation to
generation
through the oral tradition, especially the music of
tribal and village communities.
Jaap Kunst, a Dutch musicologist, introduced
the
term Ethnomusicology in 1950, though the actual discipline was in
existence
since late 19th century under the name Comparative Musicology. It may
be
said that from the publication of the Viennese scholar
Guido Adler, 'Umfang Methodeund Zid Der
Musikwissenschaft'
(1885), the term Comparative Musicology was used for the study of
non-Western
music as a separate branch of musicology. The first edition of the
Harvard
Dictionary defines Comparative Musicology
as the “study of exotic music” and
“the musical cultures outside the European tradition”.
After World War II, many musicologists did not favour the term Comparative Musicology and one of them was Jaap Kunst, the Dutch Ethnomusicologist who argued that the term was not entirely satisfactory. However the comparative method is frequently used in other fields of musicology and studies in this field are often not directly comparative. Therefore Jaap Kunst introduced the term Ethnomusicology in his little booklet Musicologa in the title page of the book in 1950. He placed the prefix “Ethno” in front of the word Musicology with a hyphen to indicate that the study would be on the music of the races of man or ethnic groups.
The term was virtually accepted immediately and
a Society for Ethnomusicology was established in 1956 in the United
States
of America. The members who formed the society discussed and favoured
the
view that, “Ethnomusicology is by no means limited to
the so-called ‘primitive music’ and is defined
more by the orientation of the student than by any rigid boundaries of
discourse”. The term Ethnomusicology is more accurate and descriptive
of
this discipline and its field of investigation than the older term,
Comparative musicology. The hyphen in
Ethnomusicology
was officially dropped by the Society for Ethnomusicology in 1957.
Prof.
David McAllester one of the founders of the Society, emphasized that
this
new discipline must not be defined by the music under
study, but by its methodology. By the late 1950s,
the term Ethnomusicology came into use with or without hyphen as
synonyms
and by the end of the decade, the
term comparative musicology acquired a historic
status.
Many Ethnomusicologists from time-to-time have
defined the term Ethnomusicology, thus changing the connotations of the
term. Jaap Kunst defined the term Ethnomusicology as “the study of the
music and musical instruments of all non-European peoples,
including both the so-called primitive peoples
and the civilized Eastern nations”. In the third edition of this same
book,
he wrote that it is a study of “Traditional music and musical
instruments
of all cultural strata of mankind” but specifically named “tribal and
folk
music and every kind of non-western Art-music”
but specifically excluding Western Art and popular music. The
definition
was satisfactory at that period for many Ethnomusicologists. More
definitions
for the term Ethnomusicology began to come up from 1960s from various
Ethnomusicologists
extending the scope of study wider and wider.