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An anthology from the University of Illinois Press Following the Elephant Ethnomusicologists Contemplate Their Discipline A collection of articles from ETHNOMUSICOLOGY Edited by Bruno Nettl Following the Elephant Ethnomusicologists Contemplate Their Discipline A collection of articles from ETHNOMUSICOLOGY Edited by Bruno Nettl COMMON THrEadS An anthology from the University of Illinois Press © 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Library of Congress Control Number: 2016954187 isbn 978-0-252-08255-9 (paperback) isbn 978-0-252-09960-5 (e-book) Contents 5 Introduction Bruno Nettl ParT I 11 Ethnomusicology, the Field and the Society • Vol. 7, no. 3 (Sept. 1963) David P. McAllester 17 definitions of “Comparative Musicology” and “Ethnomusicology”: an Historical-Theoretical Perspective • Vol. 21, no. 2 (May 1977) Alan P. Merriam 33 Ethnomusicology: a discipline defined • Vol. 23, no. 1 (Jan. 1979) George List 37 a View of Ethnomusicology from the 1960s • Vol. 50, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2006) Charlotte J. Frisbie 47 The Individual in Musical Ethnography • Vol. 56, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2012) Jesse D. Ruskin and Timothy Rice PART II 77 Recent Trends in Ethnomusicology • Vol. 11, no. 1 (Jan. 1967) Mieczyslaw Kolinski 100 Toward the Remodeling of Ethnomusicology • Vol. 31, no. 3 (Fall 1987) Timothy Rice 120 Whose Ethnomusicology? Western Ethnomusicology and the Study of Asian Music • Vol. 41, no. 2 (Summer 1997) J. Lawrence Witzleben 142 What Do Ethnomusicologists Do? An Old Question for a New Century • Vol. 53, no. 1 (Winter 2009) Adelaida Reyes PART III 161 In Honor of Our Principal Teachers • Vol. 28, no. 2 (May 1984) Bruno Nettl 174 Music, the Public Interest, and the Practice of Ethnomusicology • Vol. 36, no. 3 (Fall 1992) Jeff Todd Titon 181 Toward an Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement: Thoughts on Bridging Disciplines and Musical Worlds • Vol. 45, no. 1 (Winter 2001) Kay Kaufman Shelemay 209 Ethnomusicology and Difference • Vol. 50, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2006) Deborah Wong 229 Thoughts on an Interdiscipline: Music Theory, Analysis, and Social Theory in Ethnomusicology • Vol. 56, no. 3 (Fall 2012) Gabriel Solis Introduction Bruno Nettl Ethnomusicology is defined variously but, most frequently, as the study of music in or as culture and the study of all of the world’s musical cultures from a broadly comparative perspective. Ethnomusicologists have devoted much space and energy to contemplating and writing about their own discipline, more than members of related fields such as historical musicology and anthropology. In articles and books, they have struggled with questions of definition and principal thrust, central methodology, and interdisciplinary associations. A large proportion of this literature has appeared in the journal Ethnomusicology, which set out, from its beginnings, to be a major force in establishing a place, and an appropriate niche, for its discipline in the American and the international academy. Ethnomusicology began as an informal “Ethno-Musicology Newsletter” (at first mimeographed) circulated to interested individuals between 1953 and 1955. In 1955 this newsletter—by then multilith printed by Wesleyan University Press—became the official organ of the Society for Ethnomusicology, which had been founded in that year. In 1958 it was turned into the journal that has been published by the University of Illinois Press since 1992. The anthology of articles presented here includes a number of essays in which, in a variety of ways, ethnomusicologists wrote about their discipline in the half-century between 1963 and 2012. It illustrates both some of the abiding concerns of this field, as well as growth, development, and changes in orientation and rhetoric during those years. Among the authors are some of the founders of the Society and the journal (Mieczyslaw Kolinski, David McAllester, Alan P. Merriam, and Bruno Nettl—all early presidents of the Society for Ethnomu- sicology) and leading figures in more recent generations, including presidents Charlotte Frisbie, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, and Timothy Rice. The anthology is divided into three sections, although the boundaries between these are sometimes indistinct and some article might be appropriate in more than one. Within each section, the order is chronological. 6 Bruno Nettl The first division provides articles in which scholars survey the field as a whole in a number of different ways. “Ethnomusicology, the Field and the Society,” by David P. McAllester, comes from a special issue of ethnomusicology published to mark the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the newsletter. This issue contains several articles that assess the current state of the field, and McAllester contributed briefly to this effort. Providing a definition and principal conceptualization of their discipline was a significant strand of thought in the early days of this journal (and continues to be), and the article by Alan P. Merriam—one of the founders of the American branch of this field—surveys, quotes, and comments on over forty definitions, going back to 1885. As a sample of positions in this debate, George List’s article, “Ethnomusicology, a Discipline Defined,” makes a case for an unconventional definition of ethnomusicology— the study of music in oral (or aural) tradition. Ethnomusicology 50, no. 2, celebrates fifty years of the Society and provides a series of articles that examine the field from the perspectives of authors in several academic generations. A sample of that issue is the essay by Charlotte Frisbie, “A View of Ethnomusicology from the 1960s,” in which she gives an account of what struck her when she was a student and junior scholar. Ruskin and Rice’s much later work, “The Individual in Musical Ethnography,” is actually a history of ethnographic accounts in ethnomusicology, that is, descriptions of musical cultures based on fieldwork and closely tied to the other domains of culture. Such studies, which take a comprehensive view of musics, including the ideas that lead to them and the activities with which they are associated, constitute the central body of literature in ethnomusicology. The second group of articles consists of milestones in the literature that make a case for a central activity or approach, in the context of the field’s history (up to that point). Each asks what should be central to the investigators’ concerns. Kolinski’s “Recent Trends in Ethnomusicology” takes a critical look at a large number of important works from 1948 to 1964, which, he believes, have shifted the field’s emphasis from the study of music itself to cultural contexts, and makes a case for greater emphasis on the musical text and on comparative study. Two decades after Kolinski, Timothy Rice (“Towards the Remodeling of Ethnomusicology”), again surveying the major works of the field from 1885 on, shows that each is built on a fundamental model, and concludes by defining the field as concerned with a single question: “How do people historically construct, socially maintain, and individually create and experience music?” Witzleben’s article, “Whose Ethnomusicology,” concerns features of ethnomusicology that set it off from other kinds of music research—the personal relationship of the investigators to the culture they study, and the degree to which ethnomusicology itself is culture-specific. “What Do Ethnomusicologists Do?” by Adelaida Reyes does not make a case for a particular approach but, rather, Introduction 7 encourages her colleagues to continue seeking a central focus. She provides, as a context, a broad overview of the history of ethnomusicology influenced by philosophical considerations and comments extensively on ethnomusicologists’ concern for the explicit identity of their discipline. The third section of this anthology consists of articles that contemplate ethnomusicology from the perspective of specific, but abiding, strands of thought. Describing his relationship to four “teachers” in his fieldwork, Nettl, in “In Honor of Our Principal Teachers,” calls attention to the central contributions of informants or consultants in fieldwork to the success of the ethomusicologi- cal endeavor. Jeff Todd Titon’s “Music, the Public Interest, and the Practice of Ethnomusicology” is the introductory article in an issue of the journal devoted to “music and the public interest” and views the field from the perspective of a fundamental question: “Are we doing anyone any good?” Though brief, the article lays out the principles of the subfield known as “applied ethnomusicology” that has become prominent in the twenty-first century. Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s article, “Towards an Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement,” engages another very significant trend that began in the late 1980s, the ethnomusicological study of Western “art” or “classical” music, surveying the earlier literature and making a case study of the performance and study of Medieval and Renaissance music, particularly in late twentieth-century Boston. Here the study of “one’s own” culture as an insider or outsider—in a field thus far devoted almost explicitly to the outsider’s contribution—is the principal issue. In “Ethnomusicology and Difference,” Deborah Wong discusses a number of trends of the period from 1990 to 2003, showing ways in which ethnomusicology responded to social and academic change—and itself changed—in its embrace of new approaches such as “cultural studies,” and the increased inclusiveness in its population, its subject matter, and its relationship to various components of the academy. Gabriel Solis, in “Thoughts on an Interdiscipline,” studies the relationship of ethnomusicology to the framework of ideas and methodology in music theory (including transcription and analysis), and in social theory (the “anthropology” component of ethnomusicology), using a historical framework and surveying a large body of literature going back to 1885 but concentrated in the period since 1990. It takes as its point of departure Rice’s articles on “remodeling” ethnomusicology, also included in this anthology. The articles presented here are, we hope, a broad sampling of the ways in which ethnomusicologists—aside from carrying out their various specialized researches—contemplate the character, history, and contributions of their discipline; and the importance of the journal Ethnomusicology in this endeavor. x ParT I