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What Is Ethnomusicology? Definition,

History, and Methods
by Rebecca Bodenheimer
Updated August 11, 2019

Ethnomusicology is the study of music within the context of its larger culture, though
there are various definitions for the field. Some define it as the study of why and how
humans make music. Others describe it as the anthropology of music. If anthropology
is the study of human behavior, ethnomusicology is the study of the music humans
make.  

Research Questions 

Ethnomusicologists study a wide range of topics and musical practices throughout

the world. It is sometimes described as the study of non-Western music or “world
music,” as opposed to musicology, which studies Western European classical music.
However, the field is defined more by its research methods (i.e., ethnography, or
immersive fieldwork within a given culture) than its topics. Thus, ethnomusicologists
can study anything from folkloric music to mass-mediated popular music to musical
practices associated with elite classes.

Common research questions ethnomusicologists

ask are:

How does music reflect the wider culture in which it was created?

How is music utilized for different purposes, whether social, political,

religious, or to represent a nation or group of people?

What roles do musicians play within a given society?

How does musical performance intersect with or represent various

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axes of identity, such as race, class, gender, and sexuality?

History 

The field, as it is currently named, emerged in the 1950s, but ethnomusicology

originated as “comparative musicology” in the late 19th century. Linked to the
19th-century European focus on nationalism, comparative musicology emerged as a
project of documenting the different musical features of diverse regions of the world.
The field of musicology was established in 1885 by Austrian scholar Guido Adler, who
conceived of historical musicology and comparative musicology as two separate
branches, with historical musicology focused only on European classical music.

Carl Stumpf, an early comparative musicologist, published one of the first musical
ethnographies on an indigenous group in British Columbia in 1886. Comparative
musicologists were primarily concerned with documenting the origins and evolution of
musical practices. They often espoused social Darwinist notions and assumed that
music in non-Western societies was “simpler” than music in Western Europe, which
they considered the culmination of musical complexity. Comparative musicologists
were also interested in the ways music was disseminated from one place to another.
Folklorists of the early 20th century—such as Cecil Sharp (who collected British folk
ballads) and Frances Densmore (who collected songs of various Native American
groups)—are also considered to be ethnomusicology’s forebears.

Another major concern of comparative musicology was the classification of

instruments and musical systems. In 1914, German scholars Curt Sachs and Erich
von Hornbostel came up with a system to classify musical instruments that is still in
use today. The system divides instruments into four groups according to their
vibrating material: aerophones (vibrations caused by air, as with a flute),
chordophones (vibrating strings, as with a guitar), membranophones (vibrating animal
skin, as with drums), and idiophones (vibrations caused by the body of the instrument
itself, as with a rattle).

In 1950, Dutch musicologist Jaap Kunst coined the term “ethnomusicology,”

combining two disciplines: musicology (the study of music) and ethnology (the
comparative study of different cultures). Building on this new name, musicologist
Charles Seeger, anthropologist Alan Merriam, and others established the Society for
Ethnomusicology in 1955 and the journal Ethnomusicology in 1958. The first graduate
programs in ethnomusicology were established in the 1960s at UCLA, the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Indiana University.

The name change signaled another shift in the field: ethnomusicology moved away

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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. Alan Merriam’s 1964 book The
Anthropology of Music is a foundational text that reflected this shift. Music was no
longer thought of as an object of study that could be captured fully from a recording
or in written musical notation, but rather as a dynamic process affected by the larger
society. Whereas many comparative musicologists did not play the music they
analyzed or spend much time in the “field,” in the later 20th century extended periods
of fieldwork became a requirement for ethnomusicologists. 

In the late 20th century, there was also a move away from studying only “traditional”
non-western music that was considered to be “uncontaminated” by contact with the
West. Mass-mediated popular and contemporary forms of music-making—rap, salsa,
rock, Afro-pop—have become important subjects of study, alongside the more
well-researched traditions of Javanese gamelan, Hindustani classical music, and West
African drumming. Ethnomusicologists have also turned their focus to more
contemporary issues that intersect with music-making, such as globalization,
migration, technology/media, and social conflict. Ethnomusicology has made major
inroads in colleges and universities, with dozens of graduate programs now
established and ethnomusicologists on faculty at many major universities.

Key Theories/Concepts

Ethnomusicology takes as given the notion that music can provide meaningful insight
into a larger culture or group of people. Another foundational concept is cultural
relativism and the idea that no culture/music is inherently more valuable or better than
another. Ethnomusicologists avoid assigning value judgments like “good” or “bad” to
musical practices.

Theoretically, the field has been influenced most deeply by anthropology. For
example, anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s notion of “thick description”—a detailed way
of writing about fieldwork that immerses the reader in the researcher’s experience and
tries to capture the context of the cultural phenomenon—has been very influential. In
the later 1980s and 90s, anthropology’s “self-reflexive” turn—the push for
ethnographers to reflect on the ways their presence in the field impacts their fieldwork
and to recognize that it is impossible to maintain complete objectivity when observing
and interacting with research participants—also took hold among ethnomusicologists.

Ethnomusicologists also borrow theories from a range of other social science

disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, cultural geography, and post-structuralist
theory, particularly the work of Michel Foucault.

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Methods

Ethnography is the method that most distinguishes ethnomusicology from historical

musicology, which largely entails doing archival research (examining texts).
Ethnography involves conducting research with people, namely musicians, to
understand their role within their larger culture, how they make music, and what
meanings they assign to music, among other questions. Ethnomusicological research
requires the researcher to immerse him/herself in the culture about which he/she
writes.

Interviewing and participant observation are principal methods associated with

ethnographic research, and are the most common activities ethnomusicologists
engage in when conducting fieldwork.

Most ethnomusicologists also learn to play, sing, or dance to the music they study.
This method is considered to be a form of gaining expertise/knowledge about a
musical practice. Mantle Hood, an ethnomusicologist who founded the renowned
program at UCLA in 1960, termed this “bi-musicality,” the ability to play both
European classical music and a non-western music.

Ethnomusicologists also document music-making in various ways, by writing field

notes and making audio and video recordings. Finally, there’s musical analysis and
transcription. Musical analysis entails a detailed description of the sounds of music,
and is a method used by both ethnomusicologists and historical musicologists.
Transcription is the conversion of musical sounds into written notation.
Ethnomusicologists often produce transcriptions and include them in their
publications to better illustrate their argument.

Ethical Considerations 

There are a number of ethical issues ethnomusicologists consider in the course of

their research, and most relate to the representation of musical practices that are not
“their own.” Ethnomusicologists are tasked with representing and disseminating, in
their publications and public presentations, the music of a group of people who may
not have the resources or access to represent themselves. There is a responsibility to
produce accurate representations, but ethnomusicologists must also realize that they
can never “speak for” a group of which they are not a member.  

There is also often a power differential between the mostly Western

ethnomusicologists and their non-western “informants” or research participants in the
field. This inequality is often economic, and sometimes ethnomusicologists give
money or gifts to research participants as an informal exchange for the knowledge the
informants are providing to the researcher.

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Finally, there are often questions of intellectual property rights with regards to
traditional or folkloric music. In many cultures, there is no concept of individual
ownership of music—it is collectively owned—so thorny situations can arise when
ethnomusicologists record these traditions. They must be very upfront about what the
purpose of the recording will be and request permission from the musicians. If there is
any chance of using the recording for commercial purposes, an arrangement should
be made to credit and compensate the musicians.   

Sources

Barz, Gregory F., and Timothy J. Cooley, editors. Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for
Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology. Oxford University Press, 1997.

Myers, Helen. Ethnomusicology: An Introduction. W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.

Nettl, Bruno. The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-three Discussions. 3rd ed., University of
Illinois Press, 2015.

Nettl, Bruno, and Philip V. Bohlman, editors. Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of
Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology. University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Rice, Timothy. Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2014. 

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