Reconsidering Theory and Practice in Ethnomusicology: Applying, Advocating, and Engaging Beyond Academia

2020/4/29 Reconsidering Theory and Practice in
Ethnomusicology: Applying, Advocating, and Engaging Beyond
Academia
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Reconsidering Theory and Practice in Ethnomusicology:
Applying, Advocating, and Engaging Beyond Academia
Dr. Rebecca Dirksen
The branch of ethnomusicology commonly referred to as
“applied ethnomusicology” has
received comparatively little attention within the university
setting. The relative lack of
academic debate surrounding research and representation
activities labeled “applied” does
not, however, denote a paucity of such activity. Nor does it
reflect an absence of interest in

the subject. The dearth of discussion does reveal, however,
long-held tensions between
“pure” and “practical” scholarship and ingrained prejudices
against matters perceived as
atheoretical. These tensions and prejudices have decreased
significantly in recent years but
nevertheless remain present across the discipline. Arguably
more relevant today, the
positioning of applied ethnomusicology off to the side of more
dominant discourses hints at
some of the typical job parameters and work-related stresses
faced by “applied”
ethnomusicologists, which have tended to limit publications;
this, in turn, has limited broader
considerations of the subject.
In reality, applied research is central to the field and increasing
in importance. Whether or not
it is widely discussed, most ethnomusicologists have applied
their theoretical training in some
way during their careers, if not consistently, then at least on a
periodic basis. Moreover,
applied ethnomusicology is not a new phenomenon, as has
sometimes been assumed. In fact,
academic conversation on the subject hails at least as far back

as 1944, when Charles Seeger
issued a call for the development of an “applied musicology”—
although many researchers
were engaging in applied activities long before then. Today,
applied ethnomusicology stands in
firm response to “does it even matter?” and “what does it mean
for the ‘real world’?” in an
era when intellectual occupations are frequently dismissed as
irrelevant and elitist, and the
arts and humanities are too often written off as fluff or luxury.
In responding to a contemporary world, we also have some
tough questions to ask of
ourselves. Among them: across the discipline, are we
appropriately preparing new generations
of ethnomusicologists, given where the academic and non-
academic job market now stands
and where it may be in the future? Although some excellent
courses do of course exist, formal
study of applied ethnomusicology needs to make its way more
prominently into current
graduate curriculums as part of this preparation for new
professional realities. As a group of
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specialists, do we adequately get out into the community and
connect with people about our
work other than with those around whom we have done our
research? Most likely, we need to
talk and write a lot more about our applied and practical
activities, in ways accessible to lay
readership. And we need to demonstrate that the perceived gap
between pure and applied
research is really narrower than what it might seem.
The purpose of this essay is to provide background for these
discussions. Accordingly, I seek
to provide historical context and an overview of the state of
applied ethnomusicology today,
largely as it has evolved and exists as practice within the United
States.1 Although not an
exhaustive review of work conducted in this vein, this article is
meant to offer readers a
starting point for locating resources. Toward this goal, I will:

(1) review terminology and
definitions, (2) trace the evolution of applied ethnomusicology,
(3) lay out explanations for the
marginalization of applied research and practice, (4)
demonstrate the broadening domains of
applied work, and finally, (5) advocate for expanding the scope
of theoretical dialogue, which
should incorporate evolving understandings of ethics in research
and practice.
Wrestling with Terminology and Definitions
Just as the term “ethnomusicology” has been rigorously debated
since its implementation in
the 1950s, practitioners have struggled with naming the branch
of ethnomusicology here in
question. The Society for Ethnomusicology and the
International Council for Traditional Music,
which both support study groups devoted to the subfield, favor
“applied ethnomusicology.”
Many scholars, taking their cue from public folklore, prefer
“public” or “public-sector
ethnomusicology” (including Nicholas Spitzer and Robert
Garfias). Others find “activist”
(Ursula Hemetek), “advocacy” (Angela Impey, Jonathan
Kertzer), or even “active” (Bess

Lomax Hawes) to be more apt descriptors for their work. More
recently, Gage Averill has
invoked the term “engaged” to describe ethnomusicology
performed by ethnomusicologists
who act as public intellectuals, inspired by the Paris 1968
uprising but likely also influenced by
his long-term involvement with the mizik angaje (engaged
music) scene in Haiti (Averill 2010,
2007, 2003).2
Each of these descriptors has its limitations. While the term
“applied” is meant to point out
practical applications of the scholarship, some critics feel that
the word exudes academic
colonialism, whereby the elite scholar risks imposing—
applying—his or her erudite knowledge
on the supposedly unsuspecting and less knowledgeable culture
bearer (Block 2007:88). Also
problematic, claiming the adjective “applied” for work done
outside of the university implies
that academic work is somehow not applied work.3 By
comparison, the word “public” is
intended to reach out into broader society, beyond the
comparatively closed spaces of
academic institutions. Yet one might complain that “public”

harbors too great an association
with governmental agencies and thus automatically overlooks
activities initiated by private
individuals or groups, including non-governmental
organizations or private corporations.
“Advocacy” or “activist ethnomusicology,” often taken to
indicate a certain type of energy
directed toward socio-political concerns, could ascribe
motivations to the researcher that are
too political in nature for the work actually being conducted.
Furthermore, some scholars may
favor “engaged ethnomusicology” for its ability to reflect the
researcher’s desire for a deep
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and sustained engagement with the community. But the

terminology breaks down much like
the word “applied” does: it is incorrect to claim that
ethnomusicologists working within
academia are not in fact engaged with the groups and
individuals who participate in their
research.
This partial presentation of ongoing debates demonstrates that
the process of refining
fundamental terminology is far from complete. For the sake of
consistency, I adhere to SEM
and ICTM conventions in using “applied ethnomusicology”
throughout the remainder of this
essay. However, I—as a Haitianist—am inclined toward
“engaged ethnomusicology” for the
additional depth of meaning lent the term by linguistically
linking it to mizik angaje (see
footnote 1) and for the ease of translation between English and
French or Haitian Kreyòl.
Beyond the challenges of committing to vocabulary, defining
applied ethnomusicology is
equally difficult. This is due in part to recent interest in uniting,
under a single identifying label,
many strands of professional activity that have traditionally
fallen outside the boundaries of

mainstream ethnomusicological scholarship. Additional layers
of complexity stem from growth
within the field, as the scope of research broadens and domains
of application widen. In the
absence of any formative manual, one might turn again to the
scholarly societies for guidance
in understanding what applied ethnomusicologists do.4 For the
ICTM study group, applied
ethnomusicology is “the approach guided by principles of social
responsibility, which extends
the usual academic goal of broadening and deepening
knowledge and understanding toward
solving concrete problems and toward working both inside and
beyond typical academic
contexts.”5 The SEM Applied Ethnomusicology Section
maintains a similar proclivity toward
social responsibility, evident in online comments by section
members who consistently express
their desire to use their skills and knowledge in advocating for
and empowering the
communities in which they work. The section’s mission
statement explains that the group
“joins scholarship with practical pursuits by providing a forum
for discussion and exchange of

theory, issues, methods and projects among practitioners and
serving as the ‘public face’ of
ethnomusicology in the larger community.”6 Public
articulations of these definitions have
grown closer in recent years, likely because many of the same
individuals participate in both
groups.
Individual scholars speak along the same lines. Amy Catlin-
Jairazbhoy, in addressing SEM
section members through the Applied Ethnomusicology listserv,
referred to a “sense of
purpose” that permeates applied work and notes a common
aspiration “to engender change”
through participation and collaboration with practitioners and
performers. In reply, Ric Alviso
suggested that the applied scholar’s sense of purpose coincides
with the moral imperative to
“benefit humanity,” or else risk, through non-interested
research, perpetuating the status quo
of unequal power relations between the researcher and the
researched (Catlin-Jairazbhoy and
Alviso 2001:1). Nick Spitzer has indirectly echoed the need for
balancing power and
encouraging researcher-researchee collaboration whenever he

has explained that
ethnomusicologists should cultivate a sense of “cultural
conversation” in the place of “cultural
conservation” (2003; 1992:99).7 At the same time, though,
some folklorists see “social
intervention” as a powerful tool by which to (1) promote
learning, problem solving, and cultural
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conversation, (2) improve the quality of life, and (3) build
identity and community (Jones 1994)
—a view that readily translates to the practice of applied
ethnomusicology.8 In sum, this work
involves the collection of knowledge and the re-circulation of
that knowledge back into the

community studied, often in a way that seeks to advance
community-defined goals. Hence,
applied ethnomusicology may effectively be understood as
“both a discipline and an ethical
point of view” (McCarl 1992:121), which results in “knowledge
as well as action” (Titon
1992:315).
The proposed definitions are broadly stated and arguably
vague—perhaps necessarily so.
While precise parameters of the field remain elusive, this
looseness enables the flexibility to
remain inclusive of a broad array of activities and work
patterns.
Historical Context
Several scholars have cautioned against presuming that applied
ethnomusicology is a new
trend without historical precedence (Seeger 2006; Averill 2003;
Sheehy 1992). In fact, its
diverse modern iterations have arisen over the course of a
century out of an inextricable
combination of important individual contributions and larger
social processes, many of which
are outlined below.

The traceable record of applied music research actually predates
the academic discipline of
ethnomusicology, dating back at least as far as the
conservationist charge to collect
disappearing cultural material on the Native American Indian
reservations in the late 1800s and
early 1900s. As Native Americans were being acculturated into
(or forced to comply with) the
modern American mainstream, Frances Densmore observed that
the recordings she made of
music belonging to the Chippewa, Sioux, Winnebago, and other
tribes would ultimately be
important to the communities from which they were taken.
Densmore told those whom she
recorded, “I want to keep these things for you . . . [because] you
have much to learn about the
new way of life and you are too busy to use these things now. . .
. The sound of your voices
singing these songs will be kept in Washington in a building
that cannot burn
down.”9 Although her voice reflects now-uncomfortable
paternalistic and evolutionist attitudes
of the era, Densmore deposited the recordings into the archives
of the Bureau of American

Ethnology, making consultation of these heritage documents by
later generations of tribal
members possible.
In testament to the value of similarly archived recordings,
Passamaquoddy community scholars
Wayne Newell and Blanch Sockabasin have confirmed the
importance of Jesse Walter Fewkes’
1890 wax cylinder recordings for strengthening Passamaquoddy
community identity and
reviewing tribal history.10 Even though the circumstances under
which these cultural materials
were gathered would generally not meet contemporary research
standards, these cases
provide two early examples of applied ethnomusicology.
Other pioneering efforts of applied music research that helped
shape contemporary
philosophies and practices came from the Lomax family. Of
these, perhaps the earliest
significant contribution was John Lomax’s early collection of
cowboy songs and poems, which
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attributed then-unprecedented value to creative expressions of
previously dismissed “common
folk” (1919). This publication opened the doors to future
studies valuing “ordinary” creative
expressions. A second significant contribution followed during
the 1930s, as Alan Lomax joined
his father in recording songs from the rural South. Out of their
research trips came a well-
known act of advocacy through scholarly interest that became
part of the Lomax legacy: the
father-son team has been widely (and perhaps misleadingly)
credited with petitioning for the
release of blues musician Huddie Ledbetter (“Lead Belly”) from
a Louisiana penitentiary using
a recording of the prisoner singing.11 In late 1934, a few
months after the parole, the senior
Lomax asked Lead Belly to collaborate on a lecture-

demonstration of folk songs presented
before the Modern Language Association, helping to secure the
artist’s place as an iconic
figure of the black folk and blues tradition.
The Lomax family contributions to the field continue. From at
least the 1950s, Alan Lomax
touted the ideals of cultural pluralism from the vantage point of
a “stander-in-between” who
could moderate between powerful “cultural instruments” and the
ordinary people (Sheehy
1992:329). The junior Lomax’s best-known work—Folk Song
Style and Culture (1968), the
cantometrics study (1976), the Global Jukebox project (largely
unrealized during his lifetime)12
—underscored a fervent belief in the value of using musical
systems to compare and
understand social structures of the societies from which music
had sprung.13 Alan Lomax’s
younger sister Bess Lomax Hawes was likewise involved in
leading others to learn about and
honor cultural heritage. As deputy director for the Smithsonian
Institute’s 1976 Bicentennial
Festival of Traditional Folk Arts and later as the first director
of the Folk and Traditional Arts

Program at the National Endowment for the Arts, Hawes was
instrumental in advancing
national recognition and federal support for the folk arts.
The promotion and protection of culture and tradition were also
propelled under the New
Deal’s Works Progress Administration, when the preservation of
“living lore” was strongly
pursued. Benjamin Botkin (the national folklore editor of the
WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project
and later the head of the Archive of American Folksong at the
Library of Congress) and
Charles Seeger (who was involved with multiple federal
government programs including the
WPA’s Federal Music Project) were both directors of folklore
and folk song documentation
projects. Botkin oversaw the collection of life histories from
diverse segments of the American
population, hoping to foster understanding and tolerance for
diversity.14 Toward this aim, he
published dense anthologies such as The Treasure of American
Folklore to make folklore
accessible to consumers (Jones 1994:10). Seeger was hired by
the Resettlement Administration
specifically to use music as a resource to bring communities

together “around the project of
economic and social self-help” (Cantwell 1992:269).
Of possibly greater significance, though, were contributions that
Botkin and C. Seeger made
to the philosophical underpinning of applied work. Botkin was a
critic of the “pure folklorist”
as an Ivory Tower academic too often neglectful of on-the-
ground culture, history, literature,
and people but excessively occupied with maintaining the
boundaries of folklore as a pure and
independent discipline (Jones 1994:12).15 Botkin’s broad
positioning of folkloric studies within
society-at-large was mirrored by Seeger, who believed that
individuals engaged in
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government or public work had the responsibility to encourage
“music as a community or
social service” (C. Seeger 1944:12). This sense of social service
was borne out in Seeger’s
suggestion for the development of a field of “applied
musicology” that should be principally
concerned with “integrat[ing] music knowledge and music
practice, especially in the planning
and technical coordination of large-scale, long-term programs
of development” (18). His
position was remarkably prescient to contemporary
understandings of applied
ethnomusicology.
Francis Densmore, John and Alan Lomax, Bess Lomax Hawes,
Benjamin Botkin and Charles
Seeger are among the American scholars most frequently
credited as founders of today’s
applied ethnomusicology movement. Momentum for applied
ethnomusicology has grown
steadily since the mid-1990s led by a handful of individuals,
among whom are Jeff Todd Titon,

Anthony Seeger, Svanibor Pettan, Daniel Sheehy, Atesh
Sonenborn, Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy,
Nicholas Spitzer, and Martha Ellen Davis. By 2010, proponents
of the sub-discipline had grown
too numerous to list individually, although together they still
represent a small subset of
professionals in the field. Recent awareness has increased in
part due to several important
conferences held on applied work within the last ten years,
including one hosted by Brown
University in 2003 (“Invested in Community: Ethnomusicology
and Musical Advocacy”) and the
ICTM Study Group on Applied Ethnomusicology meeting in
Ljublijana, Slovenia in 2008
(“Historical and Emerging Approaches to Applied
Ethnomusicology”). Moreover, annual SEM
meetings have featured panels sponsored by the SEM Section
for Applied Ethnomusicology.
Besides being shaped by early influence from specific
individuals, the rise of applied
ethnomusicology has been driven by five additional overlapping
factors.16 The first of these
factors is the rise of public folklore and applied anthropology as
distinct disciplines, both of

which are closely related to applied ethnomusicology.17 Pivotal
events building up these fields
include the founding of the American Folklore Society in 1888,
the designation of folklore and
anthropology as “scientific” subjects suited for study in the
university setting, and the
promotion of “cultural conservation,” which yielded important
dialogues on heritage
protection.18 Also strengthening the applied fields was the
backlash against “armchair
scholarship” and “Ivory Tower elitist isolationism,” which
prompted calls for fieldwork
concerning “regular folks” and research relevant to real life.
Much of the early fieldwork took
place among rural, indigenous populations and was rooted in
evolutionist thinking, but it
ultimately strengthened the connection between the university
and the community. Although
folklore was initially deemed a phenomenon of rural life,
fieldwork soon expanded to embrace
urban dwellers as well, especially when leading folklorist
Richard Dorson suddenly
“discovered” that folklore existed in the city (Abrahams
1992:22).

Applied work received another boost from the explosion of
interest in staging festivals to
commemorate folk life. Through productions such as the
National Folk Festival, Smithsonian’s
Folklife Festival, and the Newport Folk Festival, the population
can consume and participate in
its own representation simply by attending a performance
(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998).
Likewise, archives have played a role in presenting the
community to itself, by permitting
community members to enjoy performances safeguarded on
audio and visual recordings.
Finally, in advancing the applied side of these disciplines, the
past thirty years have seen a
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rapid expansion of scholarly societies geared toward promoting
“useful” research, including
the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology
(NAPA), the Southern California
Applied Anthropology Network (SCAAN), and the Society for
Applied Anthropology (SAA) in
addition to the previously highlighted ICTM study group and
SEM section.
The second factor is that applied ethnomusicology, like public
folklore and applied
anthropology, has been pushed along by particular trends,
sensibilities, and needs held by the
American population during certain eras. The Great Depression
compelled anthropologists to
look for practical ways to solve problems impacting society,
which explains the implementation
of the New Deal cultural documentation projects. By contrast,
the post-World War II
environment and mid-century independence movements
encouraged the questioning of
Eurocentric and colonialist values while simultaneously
heightening concern for and interest in
marginalized communities. As Eurocentrism and colonialism
were being examined, public

discourse also turned to explore cultural pluralism and cultural
equity (see A. Lomax 1972).
New appreciation for culture of the masses spurred the folk
revival movement, until
McCarthyism and Cold War politics administered a heavy blow
as the FBI investigated folk
artists and supporters for alleged communist sympathies.19
Like scholars of any other discipline, applied anthropologists,
folklorists, and
ethnomusicologists have found themselves navigating discursive
challenges that change over
time: cultural relativism and salvage ethnography, for example,
are no longer deemed
intellectually sound arguments even as they were once
academically fashionable. During the
twenty years following World War II, the paradigm of fieldwork
shifted from “building a
national culture out of regional folklore to using performances
of folklore to give a public
presence to underrepresented cultural groups” (Hufford
2006:846). As Anthony Seeger has
explained, while the history of applied anthropology in the
United States is long, it has also

been “somewhat conflicted” as it progresses through successive
ideologies (2008:272).
Third, public agencies and private sector organizations acting
on behalf of the public have
played a significant role in developing the atmosphere and
infrastructure necessary for the
growth of these three parallel disciplines. The availability of
federal jobs for anthropologists
and folklorists (with the WPA, for example) plummeted after
World War II. However, other
public sector programs, such as the Smithsonian Institute, grew
in popularity and replaced
previous models. In addition, international, federal, state and
local funding agencies acting in
support of the arts—including the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), the National Endowment for the Arts,
the National Endowment for the
Humanities, and the New York State Council on the Arts—
gained prominence.20 Legions of
non-profit private organizations working in the public domain
have sprung up as well, such as
the National Council for the Traditional Arts, the California
Traditional Music Society, and

CityLore. Independent folklore groups (La Troupe Makandal,
Csárdás Dance Company,
Barynya, Jean Appolon Expressions) are innumerable, as are
independent record labels
ostensibly less concerned with profits than with benefiting the
artists and society more
generally (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Cumbancha,
Ethical Music).21 These
organizations have employed applied ethnomusicologists,
folklorists and anthropologists and
contribute to the overall climate supporting applied work.
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A fourth factor contributing to the rise in applied work is
simply observed: exponentially more
Ph.D.s have been awarded than there are academic positions

available. Several years ago,
Susan Wright reported that the United Kingdom graduates
roughly one hundred
anthropologists from doctoral programs per year who must
compete over one or two
academic openings—a phenomenon that has only become more
exaggerated (2006:28). In the
United States, a similarly extreme imbalance exists between
holders of humanities PhDs and
the number of university positions vacated or created in any
given year. At the most
fundamental level, graduates must seek out jobs anywhere they
are available, which includes
the public sector, the development sector, the commercial
sector, and the like. Such
employment tends not to be so-called “pure” ethnomusicology.
The fifth and most recent factor revolves around growing
preoccupations with music therapy,
cultural tourism, violence reduction initiatives, and post-
disaster recovery efforts. Although just
beginning to receive scholarly attention, these side interests are
unquestionably …

Music and the New Cosmopolitanism:
Problems and Possibilities
Sarah Collins and Dana Gooley
“German composer.” “Russian composer.” “French composer.”
“American
composer of Italian birth.” “Austrian composer, son of Leopold
Mozart.”
These are the first sentences of the articles on Beethoven,
Tchaikovsky,
Josquin Des Prez, Menotti, and W. A. Mozart from the New
Grove
Dictionary, the central resource of music history research.
Though the
sentences sound neutral and descriptive, they represent a
particular way of
thinking about the identities of musicians, one we often take for
granted:
that the nation to which a musician belongs is a “primary” fact,
on par
with birth and death dates. Nations are part of the mental maps
that ori-
ent us and help determine where a composer is “coming from”
or where a
composer stands in the scheme of music history. Even before
Mozart is the
son of Leopold, Grove tells us, he is the offspring of Austria.
National tags
emplace musicians not only territorially, but also culturally. To
call a mu-
sician “French” is not just to mark a place of birth but also to
imply his or
her imbrication with the communal, institutional, and aesthetic
affiliations
of the French nation. For reasons both pragmatic and

ideological, the
communities of scholarship that shape, interrogate, and revise
music–his-
torical narratives have found national frameworks difficult to
avoid or
resist.
But national frames, however enabling for certain purposes, can
also
be limiting, since the nation is only one among many possible
entities or
communities to which music can establish a sense of belonging.
Musicians
have often learned their art, acquired status, and reached
audiences
through displacements and dislocations that take them beyond
national
boundaries. An exceptionally strong talent or a hunger for
education
might motivate them to undertake an international tour or seek
out a par-
ticular music teacher in a faraway place. “In every time and
place for
which a history can be written,” writes Celia Applegate, “one
could
probably—in cases definitely—find musicians on the move.”1
Sometimes
these displacements are simply a matter of opportunity. In the
fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, patronage and diplomacy brought Franco-
Flemish
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polyphonists to Italy. In the mid-eighteenth century, Italian
troupes traveled
to Paris and had a major impact on the city’s theatrical and
intellectual life.
In the first half of the nineteenth century Russia attracted
composers and
virtuosos from England, France, Germany, and Italy, many of
whom received
patronage allowing them to stay there long-term.
Beyond these territorial movements, music can also displace
musi-
cians stylistically and aesthetically. Aaron Copland arrived at
his distinc-
tively “American” voice in part by traveling to Paris and
absorbing the
currents of European modernism. And without traveling very far
at all,
J. S. Bach studied Italian and French scores to expand his
stylistic re-
sources and develop a hybridized aesthetic perspective quite
unlike that of
the typical German kapellmeister of his time. Thus can the
movement of
notated scores—and in later periods, of recordings—serve as an
agent of
displacement, resituating a musician in a “place” that cannot be
reduced
to a geographical origin or local network. And when scores or

recordings
are the mediators, this can occur regardless of whether the
musician
travels or engages in face-to-face encounters with unfamiliar
styles.
Musicians always come from definite, concrete places, but their
aesthetic
outlook often emerges from a place less easy to territorialize or
localize.
How can we orient ourselves toward the non-national and non-
localizable dimensions of music history and practice? What
vocabularies
and concepts can we engage to free us from the long, deep
influence of
nation-centered thinking? Do the displacing processes described
above
qualify as “European,” “international,” “transnational,”
“global,” “cosmo-
politan”? Do they constitute a situation of “cultural transfer”?2
All of these
concepts have been summoned and developed to address
particular kinds
of questions. But in recent years the term “cosmopolitan” has
been
embraced in a more enthusiastic and progressive spirit. There is
now a
burgeoning stream of scholarship that explicitly aims at
undermining
nation-oriented categories by focusing on transnational
exchanges,
border-crossing encounters, and expressions of the so-called
cosmopolitan
in music culture.3 These studies have had the welcome effect of
exposing
the exclusivist logic of nationalism, revealing the multiple

layers of affilia-
tion that play into music’s creation and consumption, and
theorizing musi-
cal expressions in terms of their manner of negotiating local,
regional,
national, and global axes of relation. They tend to align
cosmopolitanism
with recent intellectual trends, including a shift away from the
bounded
categories of identity politics toward an analysis of multiply
affiliated or
intersectional identity, a renewed interest in exilic and diasporic
forms of
expression, and a sharper focus on experiences of coerced
mobility, colo-
nial oppression, and migration brought about by economic
neoliberalism,
racism, and religious intolerance. With the resurgence of
nationalisms in
140 The Musical Quarterly
today’s political culture and the concomitant affirmation or
normalization
of political insularity, cosmopolitanism could not be a more
relevant and
welcome outlook.
It is precisely because cosmopolitanism is so appealing, both as
flexi-
ble model of belonging and as resistance to reactionary
nationalisms, that
it risks becoming overused and losing its critical potential. In
many recent

reclamations of cosmopolitanism, the concept of the nation
tends to linger
in the background, however faintly, as a negative image against
which the
cosmopolitan appears as good or desirably alternative. In
musicology, the
term is too often applied to anything that lacks national
singularity: insti-
tutions, social groups, distribution networks, genres, or stylistic
idioms,
composers, audiences, critics, cities, and journals. But what
binds together
this multiplicity of supposedly cosmopolitan things? We should
be wary of
using the term cosmopolitanism as a casual descriptor for the
multitude of
diverse encounters, affiliations, and alliances we discover. Not
all border-
crossing encounters reflect or produce cosmopolitan
sensibilities. Some
serve only to reinforce national identification, and others evince
primarily
commercial or administrative conditions that do not necessarily
carry over
into changes in ethical practices and attitudes of belonging.
As an alternative to such extremely wide applications of the
term
and to the conceptual primacy of the nation, we propose to
follow a nar-
rower interpretation of cosmopolitanism as an ethical–political
stance, de-
scended from the Stoics and Cynics of antiquity, reclaimed by
authors in
the Enlightenment, and carried through into modernity. Our
interpreta-

tion invests a certain virtue in belonging to, or striving to
belong to, a
“larger” world as a way of keeping local and parochial
attachments in
check. This understanding of cosmopolitanism takes it out of
the familiar
chain of synonyms such as “international” or “transnational”
and, by em-
phasizing its philosophical and attitudinal aspects, disjoins it
from the ste-
reotype of the rootless or effete cosmopolitan, which took shape
in the
late nineteenth century and effectively reduced “cosmopolitan”
to an iden-
tity marked by a lifestyle of luxury and travel. The study of
cosmopolitan-
ism in music, we suggest, can productively focus on how its
ethical–
political mandate has found its way into the behaviors,
attitudes, and
practices of composers, performers, and listeners. In this we
follow the
lead of “new cosmopolitan” criticism, which has for well over a
decade
sought to reclaim a critically productive cosmopolitanism and
trace out its
expressions in literature and other cultural forms.
Accordingly, this essay offers an overview of new cosmopolitan
dis-
course and identifies some of its intersections with recent
interventions by
musicologists and ethnomusicologists. Proceeding in a largely
theoretical
mode, we critique selected recent work on musical
cosmopolitanism to

Music and the New Cosmopolitanism 141
Deleted Text: -
Deleted Text: -
assess the promises and potential pitfalls of this growing field.
We intend
to promote a more self-conscious use of the term and a
heightened aware-
ness of the dilemmas involved in advocating cosmopolitanism
as a desir-
able stance. The existence of such dilemmas need not invalidate
the
aspiration toward a cosmopolitan viewpoint. Indeed, a
responsible cosmo-
politan stance will only be enhanced by acknowledging and
delineating its
limitations through detailed and historically situated accounts
of its vari-
ous iterations. We further argue that addressing musical
cosmopolitanism
involves taking a longer historical view of the postures adopted
by com-
posers, performers, listeners, and critics than has been
customary in recent
studies, where it appears to belong mainly to the conditions of
the twenti-
eth and twenty-first centuries. Alongside such historical
inquiry, it also re-
quires that we examine our own practices of stance-taking as
very much a
part of that history.
Our ultimate goal is to suggest ways in which the concept of the

cos-
mopolitan might be focused in order to make the best of its
specificity vis-
�a-vis the transnational, the international, the global, and other
related
concepts. In particular, we propose to restore to it a focus on
philosophi-
cal, ethical, and political stance that is sometimes obscured
when it is de-
duced empirically from global flows, transnational networks,
and the like.
If we can identify a distinct field of behaviors, attitudes, and
practices in
musical life that are shaped by an ideal of belonging to a larger
world, and
find ways to elaborate on the historically contingent
circumstances that
this ideal has been invoked to critique, the term cosmopolitan
might enter
our discourse with a more distinct profile and with greater
critical poten-
tial. Questions about the possibility of a “global” history of
music, about
the problematic category of “world music,” and about the role
of interna-
tional relations in music history are occupying the attention of
musicolo-
gists more than ever. As they continue to preoccupy us, it will
become all
the more important to understand how we use the term
cosmopolitan and
how we can make it operate effectively in dialogue.
The New Cosmopolitanism and Musicology
Some of the confusion around cosmopolitanism arises from an

elision of-
ten made between empirically traceable cross-border phenomena
and the
stances or attitudes of cosmopolitan actors. Music historians
have mainly
used the term in the first, more descriptive sense, to mark
phenomena
that are international by virtue of membership, circulation, or
style. Here
the cosmopolitan is implicitly contrasted with the national, the
regional,
or the local. Even when used in this empirical sense, the term
often hints
at a broadened mentality or outlook, or a particular sense of
place in the
world. But crucially, this link is never spelled out, and too often
it is as-
sumed that cross-border phenomena naturally give rise to
cosmopolitan
stances. Cosmopolitanism will only be an analytically useful
concept if we
can place the focus more squarely on the outlook and its
relation to a mu-
sician’s historical circumstances. Discerning the composer’s or
listener’s
ethical stance and sense of “world-belonging” is unquestionably
a murky
task, and this presents methodological challenges that will be
discussed in
the final section of this essay. Nevertheless, difficulty and
ambiguity do

not justify an absence of analysis, and it is only by investigating
these kinds
of outlooks and their implications that we can extend
discussions of cos-
mopolitanism beyond the empirical, and reanimate the political
and ethi-
cal impetus implicit in the concept.
By concerning ourselves with the stances of musicians, critics,
and
listeners of the past, we have the potential to bring historical
actors into
dialogue with the thriving field of “new cosmopolitan”
criticism. In the
1990s a variety of theorists from anthropology, sociology,
political science,
literature, and other fields began revisiting the history and
philosophy of
cosmopolitanism in order to reframe discourses of difference,
identity, and
contingency that many believed had congealed into an inflexible
ortho-
doxy. New cosmopolitans voiced a sense of exhaustion with
negative cri-
tique and with the repetitive assertions of radical contingency.
While they
accepted a framework in which socially constructed difference
was taken
for granted, new cosmopolitans cautiously advocated a critical
method
that acknowledged, and made space for, the possibility of
communication
across differences or contingencies. Much of the impetus came
from the
robust debate initiated in an article by Martha Nussbaum, who
argued for

the propagation of a sense of world-belonging and global
awareness as a
means of sustaining foundational human aspirations toward
equality and
justice, and of averting the schism between multiculturalism and
national-
ism.4 Nussbaum was roundly criticized for attempting to
legitimize a form
of Enlightenment universalism without adequately accounting
for its
tainted imperialist associations. Subsequent discussions
supported her
underlying mandate but attempted to reformulate a sense of
cosmopoli-
tanism that was “new” in contrast to the “old” sullied versions.
The new
cosmopolitanism gained prominence through publications such
as
Anthony K. Appiah’s essay “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” the
watershed essay
collection Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the
Nation, and a
2000 special issue of Public Culture devoted to the topic.5
Although the emerging perspectives were varied, new
cosmopolitans
tended to look favorably upon those aspects of globalization
that weakened
the force of constructs like the “nation,” and they affirmed new
sorts of affil-
iation and new senses of world-belonging—“thinking and
feeling beyond

the nation” or “border thinking”6—that were emerging from the
ground of
national and ethnic differences. Many embraced
cosmopolitanism as a di-
versification of attachments that would not necessarily displace
national be-
longing, but would complement and complicate it, thus offering
a space for
subjectivities formed across and between the borders of the
modern state.
More recently, these developments have been criticized for
failing to advo-
cate a coherent political position, and have arguably diluted the
notion of
cosmopolitanism to the point of ineffectuality.7 The issues
remain conten-
tious since historically cosmopolitanism has been summoned to
support po-
sitions that can be viewed as both emancipatory and oppressive,
communal
and isolationist, tolerant of diversity yet homogenizing.
The new cosmopolitanism represents a development within the
politi-
cal philosophy of the academic Left and does not constitute a
musicological
project or historical method per se. It might therefore seem
almost perverse
to try engaging with the new cosmopolitans as musicologists. If
their debates
are already so contentious, how will we ever be able to relate
their concerns
to the very different fields and subfields of musicology? In
addition, the new
cosmopolitanism has a normative tendency—an antagonism

toward flat
assertions of difference—that grates against the methods of
historical and
ethnographic projects whose ostensible goal is to observe,
document, and
catalogue differences. In this circumstance, it would be
surprising if the ethi-
cal and political dimensions of cosmopolitanism were not
greeted with some
trepidation. Amanda Anderson has identified a widespread
discomfort with
cosmopolitanism in the field or literary studies and cultural
theory, and
wondered “whether the avowal of cosmopolitanism is destined
to have a
retrograde effect in the current debates”—a concern that may
also hold
true of musicology. “Why dredge up this tainted and
problematic word?”
she asks, and answers this by citing Bruce Robbins: “[We]
dredge it up so
we know our hands are already dirty anyway.”8
Are the hands of musicologists “already dirty” with the
assumptions
and postures that have made cosmopolitanism a problematic
word? Much
of the musicology of the past twenty years has arguably moved
in a cosmo-
political direction without describing itself as such. For
example, the vig-
orous critiques of Dahlhaus in the 1990s, and especially of his
German
biases, bore a skeptical political undercurrent that clearly
proceeded from
a cosmopolitan standpoint. Similarly, a desire to liberate the

field from re-
ified national categories has been notable in opera scholarship,
which long
thrived on the refined parsing of national-stylistic idioms.9
Michael Tusa,
for example, has argued that Weber’s Der Freischütz, once
considered a
historical crux of German national opera, is more accurately
understood
as a “cosmopolitan” opera through its conscientious blending of
the
national styles and a rejection of the supposed weaknesses of
Italian and
French styles from which it borrows. Tusa defines an early
nineteenth-
century model of cultural cosmopolitanism that helps separate
Weber’s
Der Freischütz from the Scylla of jingoistic German patriotism
and the
Charybdis of “rootless international” cosmopolitanism. The
resultant im-
age of Weber taking critical distance from the French and
Italian styles, in
order to correct or “improve” them, tellingly mirrors Tusa’s
own distinctly
modern position as a reviser of nation-centered musicological
interpretations.
Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, too, take on the entrenched
cate-
gories of national style in their A History of Opera. They argue,

for exam-
ple, that German and French varieties of comic opera of the
eighteenth
century are so interrelated as to deserve a single umbrella term,
“dialogue
opera”:
However useful it may sometimes be to draw distinctions
between the
three traditions [Italian, French, German], we need to bear in
mind that
such separations made themselves felt in different domains at
different
times, and that the aesthetic precepts and musical devices that
flowed
between the three dominant operatic traditions could often erase
their
differences.10
The authors do not deny that these national-stylistic differences
exist, but
reassert the non-exclusivity of operatic languages in terms of
their circula-
tion and combination, a characteristic so pervasive as to
potentially “erase
their differences.”11 The mildly corrective tone—“we need to
bear in
mind that . . .”—is a trace of the disciplinary inertia against
which Abbate
and Parker are working, and this tone becomes stronger in their
later iter-
ation of the same idea: “There has never been much point to
trying to
close off one operatic tradition from the alternative languages
that feed it
and are fed from it.” In past historiography, of course, there was

very
much a point in emphasizing such differences. Thus Abbate and
Parker,
without adopting an overtly polemical tone, reveal a gently
normative,
cosmopolitical hand.
In spite of these pivots toward a cosmopolitan perspective, there
is
evidently a reluctance of scholars to self-identify as
“cosmopolitan.” The
problem is not merely that such self-identification would
compromise a
desired impression of neutrality, but that the term cosmopolitan
remains
tainted by nineteenth-century anti-cosmopolitanism, which
criticized cos-
mopolitans as rootless, and by historical associations with elite
classes and
imperialistic ideologies. Self-identifying as cosmopolitan brings
us face to
face with what Amanda Anderson calls the “awkward elitism”
of cosmo-
politanism, which lies in the contrast between the
cosmopolitan’s
Deleted Text: crticized
privileged social status and the democratic or humanitarian
claims he or
she often advances. The awkwardness cannot be driven away by
proposing
alternative cosmopolitanisms, such as “vernacular” or “rooted”

ones, that
are understood to emerge spontaneously out of the experiences
of non-
elites, or to otherwise operate from non-European frames of
reference. For
in practice the identification and interpretation of such
cosmopolitanisms
has been mainly the work of an intellectual class of scholars and
critics.
Cosmopolitanism, in other words, may be inescapably elite in
some re-
spects, and it might be more productive to acknowledge this
than to skirt
around it rhetorically. The awkwardness of our position obliges
us not to
dismiss cosmopolitanism out of hand, but to track the specific
ends toward
which it is mobilized. This point has been made by a number of
“new cos-
mopolitan” authors who wish to retrieve a positively valued
“critical cos-
mopolitanism” from among the less attractive manifestations
that history
offers.
In a searching essay ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes has tried
to
make a more explicitly affirmative case for cosmopolitanism.
Like the mu-
sicologists who criticize the limits of nation-based categories,
Stokes
expresses impatience with some of the prevailing
methodological habits of
his discipline:
I’m struck by the somewhat limited nature of explanations that

would in-
terpret the hemispheric spread of quadrilles and polkas, for
instance, purely
in terms of empire, colonization, migration, settlement and so
forth. . . .
Could music and dance move, I find myself wondering,
according to an in-
terior logic, and not, simply, the logic of social movement and
politics.
Could it be that danced or musical form gets picked up by
another society
simply because of a human fascination for the diversity of form,
particularly
forms that embody or index satisfying and pleasurable social
processes? . . .
Don’t these kinds of thing also draw us to “other” music and
dance, more
often, perhaps, than the pursuit of distinction . . . or of
identity?12
Here Stokes takes ethnomusicology to task not only for
excluding motives
and agencies such as “pleasure and play” or “human
fascination,” but also
for its tendency to read music’s sociality in terms of
“distinction” and par-
ticularized identities. The global flows that brought European
dances to
the New World, he argues, cannot be fully understood in
showing how so-
cial groups produce differential articulations. They demand a
complemen-
tary account explaining how adaptation and dialogic exchange
with
exogenous musics can take place at all. This provocative
reclamation of a

“human” commonality that subtends cultural difference—bodily
in the case
of dance and inventive in the case of musical “diversity of
form”—does not
appear to be a return to universalism but rather a challenge to
methodological habits that may cause us to overrate the non-
transparency
of different cultures to one another. Stokes fully acknowledges
that musi-
cians and dancers are made by and constrained by the worlds
they inhabit,
but he takes the optimistic stance that in encounters with
cultural otherness
“musical cosmopolitans create musical worlds” that are “the
product of cer-
tain kinds of intentionality and agency.”13
Stokes’s suggestion that cosmopolitanism can offer alternative
lines
of interpretation and open new methodological pathways is
characteristic
of new cosmopolitan discourse generally. For example Jillian
Heydt-
Stevenson and Jeffrey N. Cox, in introducing a special journal
issue on
“Romantic Cosmopolitanism,” conceived the project as “an
exploration of
the ways in which cosmopolitanism offered cultural, social, and
political
practices that could not be reduced to local or national or
imperial ambi-

tions.”14 Challenging the interpretation of Romanticism as
inwardly
turned, disengaged from the world, and naturally inclined
toward essen-
tialist nationalism, they reinterpret it as a movement “fully
engaged in the
world,” whether through stances following “multiple
allegiances” or
through the cultivation of a “viable vision of world citizenship,
global de-
mocracy, and transnational institutions that offered an important
alterna-
tive to local attachments, patriotism, and international war and
expropriation.”15 Nineteenth-century Romantic authors and
their readers,
of course, had inherited cosmopolitan ideas and stances from
eighteenth-
century French, German, and Scottish sources, revising and
adapting
them to contemporary conditions. And literature has been an
important
field for cosmopolitical imaginings ever since. For this reason
Rebecca
Walkowitz, in a study of modernist and contemporary fiction,
describes
cosmopolitanism as “a tradition of political affiliation and
philosophical
thought” that involves “thinking and feeling in nonexclusive,
nondefini-
tive ways.”16 This “tradition” is not a linear, systematic
descent of ideas
from Enlightenment writers. It is spread more diffusely through
practices
of affiliation and political stance-taking that are keyed to
specific histori-
cal configurations. In the case of contemporary fiction, such

affiliations
and stances are not even practiced so much as imagined at the
level of
narratives and relationships. They are authorially constructed
even when
the material is derived from contemporary realities.
Studies of literary cosmopolitanism, then, zoom in at the level
of the
imaginary and the aspirational. They thrive on a recognizably
Western
and elite notion of authorship in which the author is a kind of
intellectual—thinking about, reflecting upon, and prospectively
reimagin-
ing the world through the medium of fiction, and from within a
certain
kind of tradition. This focus on authorial consciousness—which
does not
necessarily produce a fully apperceptive or sovereign
consciousness—puts
Stokes’s approach into perspective. The New World musicians
he de-
scribes more closely resemble the “vernacular” or “discrepant”
cosmopoli-
tans proposed by postcolonial theory, who think and act
according to
non-European, “ground-up” epistemologies. For example, the
musicians
who, in his account, engaged with the European quadrille come
across as
brilliant appropriators, who absorb the exogenous, imported

genre into
already existing musical and dance practices. For Stokes, the
very fact
that such appropriation occurs seems to be sufficient to call it
“cosmopoli-
tan,” and there is no need to explain how the musical invention
intersects
with the musicians’ sense of world-belonging. In our view,
however, such
syncretic or hybridizing practices only become specifically
cosmopolitan
when they are related to an altered stance. The author-centered
approach
currently taken by literary studies is preferable not because we
wish to
shore up a dated or individualistic concept of authorship, but
because it
gives access to the conscious and reflective element that
distinguishes
cosmopolitanism from other kinds of global relationality and
from
empirically accessible processes of stylistic hybridization.
The focus on stance that we propose here also departs from the
idea
of “actually existing cosmopolitanism.” This phrase was coined
to advo-
cate for a concrete, “real” cosmopolitanism that would look like
a healthy,
materialist alternative to the abstract philosophical
cosmopolitanism of
Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant. The phrase might be
particu-
larly appealing to historians invested in the authority of
empirically
grounded research. But a conceptual opposition between

abstract, unlived
ideas, on the one hand, and material conditions and life
practices on the
other, cannot be sustained. It should go without saying that
Kant’s cosmo-
politanism, though expressed in the discourse of philosophical
reason, was
informed by “actually existing” conditions; it was a response to
an interna-
tional political order that was coming into being in the later
eighteenth
century, where it seemed increasingly urgent to contain large-
scale vio-
lence.17 Unfamiliarity with those historical conditions should
not lead to
the conclusion that Kant was …
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Introduction to the Special Issue: The
Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music
Laudan Nooshin
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Introduction to the Special Issue: The
Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music
Laudan Nooshin
In her 2001 article on the early music scene in Boston, Kay
Kaufman Shelemay offers
what she hoped would be ‘useful insights into the collapsing
musical boundaries in
our changing world and the new agendas that might unite
musical scholarship
through a shared pedagogy and practice of musical ethnography’
(2001:1). She goes
on to discuss the ways in which historical musicologists have
begun to engage with
ethnographic method previously seen as the reserve of*and
indeed characterising*
ethnomusicology. Shelemay notes in particular the work of Gary
Tomlinson
(for example, 1993), Leo Treitler (1989) and Peter Jeffrey
(1992), all of whom have
in various ways thematised notions of historical ‘Otherness’, as
well as some of the
contributors to the 1995 special issue of the Journal of the
American Musicological
Society on ‘Music Anthropologies and Music Histories’. As I
discuss below, Shelemay’s

observation (citing her earlier 1996 article) that ‘On the ground,
wherever scholars
actually practice a musical ethnography, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to
discern where boundaries conceptualized and named
geographically can in fact be
drawn’ (2001:4) has especial salience for the articles presented
in this themed issue of
Ethnomusicology Forum; this is symptomatic both of the trend
towards ethnography
within musicology (that is, the musicology of western art music,
or ‘historical
musicology’ in the United States; henceforth simply
‘musicology’), and more broadly
of changes within the discipline since the late 1980s which have
led to a growing
interest in and engagement with ethnomusicological thought and
method.
More or less concomitant with these changes within
musicology, ethnomusicol-
ogists became increasingly interested in the study of urban
traditions, particularly as
part of what has been termed ‘ethnomusicology at home’. In
turn, this engagement

with the familiar led to greater attention to what Bruno Nettl*in
his study of an
exemplar music school in the American mid-west*described as
‘the last bastion of
unstudied musical culture’ (1995:2): western classical music;
unstudied, that is, from
Laudan Nooshin is Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at City
University London. She has published widely on
various aspects of Iranian music culture, including creative
processes in Iranian classical music and music and
youth culture in Iran. Recent publications include the edited
volume Music and the Play of Power in the Middle
East, North Africa and Central Asia (Ashgate Press, 2009). Her
forthcoming monograph is entitled Iranian
Classical Music: The Discourses and Practice of Creativity
(Ashgate). Since 2008, Laudan has been co-Editor of
Ethnomusicology Forum. Correspondence to: Laudan Nooshin,
Centre for Music Studies, City University
London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK. Email:
[email protected]
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/11/030285-16
# 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2011.659439
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 20, No. 3, December 2011, pp. 285�300

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2011.659439
an ethnomusicological perspective. For Nettl, this represented
the culmination of
many years of writing about ‘other’ musics, as he describes
reaching a point where
‘eventually, also having practiced the outsider’s view, to look
also at the familiar as if
it were not, at one’s own culture as if one were a foreigner to it’
(1995:1). Martin
Stokes also sees this trend as an indication of
‘Ethnomusicology’s coming of age . . .
demonstrated in its ability to interrogate the familiar and the
similar, not just the
exotic and different’ (2008:209). Shelemay goes further,
arguing that such a move is
an important step towards ‘de-colonising’ ethnomusicology and
helping the field to
‘emerge from behind a veil of cross-cultural difference’
(2001:25).
Two points emerge from these observations, one concerning the
apparent
convergence of different areas of music study; and the second,
following on from

this, the question of (sub)disciplinary identities and their
continued usefulness or
otherwise. These questions have been explored fairly
extensively in recent years, most
notably in Henry Stobart’s (2008) edited volume The New
(Ethno)musicologies, but
also in writings by Shelemay (1996), Jonathan Stock (1997a),
Tomlinson (2003, on
the relationship between ethnography and historiography), and
more recently
Georgina Born (2010). In particular, the trends above have
prompted anxieties
about disciplinary boundaries: if ethnomusicology is no longer
characterised (at least
in large part) by its engagement with ‘other’ musics, and if
musicologists are starting
to draw on ethnography as a central research methodology, what
are the implications
for the relationship between these two areas of music studies?
Before considering
this question further, however, it should first be noted
that*Nettl’s comments
notwithstanding*there have in fact been a number of
ethnomusicological studies of
western art music over the past several decades, admittedly not

all strongly
ethnographic. Nettl himself, in a landmark article published in
1963, sought to
apply the techniques of ethnomusicology to ‘western’ music by
conducting a
questionnaire survey of college students examining their
classifications of music, and
asking what these might reveal about aspects of culture beyond
music. More than two
decades later, Nettl adopted a similar approach in seeking to
understand ‘the
relationship of the musical system to the rest of culture’
(1989:8) through examining
how music is studied and what is valued within western music
education. In his
earlier 1963 piece (a response to an article by Merriam on the
purposes of
ethnomusicology), Nettl proposes that ethnomusicology’s
uniqueness, and what it
might usefully offer to other areas of music study, lies not in
any distinct purpose (as
suggested by Merriam) but in its techniques and approaches.
Almost 50 years on, this
idea is thoroughly borne out by the articles presented in this

volume.
A number of other scholars have similarly sought to apply the
techniques and
approaches of ethnomusicology to the study and understanding
of western art music.
Some of this work has focused on institutions such as music
schools (Cameron 1982;
Kingsbury 1988; Nettl 1995), research centres (Born 1995) and
orchestras (Herndon
1988; Small 1987), whilst others examine particular locales or
communities (see
Bohlman 1991; Brennan 1999; Finnegan 1989; see also
Wachsmann 1981). Since the
early 2000s, a growing body of literature has emerged,
including several monographs
286 L. Nooshin
and doctoral dissertations (see, for example, Beckles Willson
2009a, 2009b; Cottrell
2004; El-Ghadban 2009; Etherington 2007*and several other
chapters in Kartomi,
Dreyfus and Pear 2007; Everett and Lau 2004; Melvin and Cai
2004; Pitts 2005; Pitts
and Spencer 2008; Sailer 2004; Shelemay 2001; Usner 2010;

Wint 2012; Yoshihari
2007), and this work is by no means the sole preserve of
ethnomusicologists, but
includes writings by music educators, performers,
musicologists, anthropologists and
others, arguably attracting a more diverse range of scholars than
many other areas of
ethnomusicological study. The current issue seeks to contribute
to this field of
research and is, to my knowledge, the first collection of essays
on the topic. The aim
of this brief introduction is not to present an exhaustive survey
of extant literature on
the ethnomusicology of western art music (for a useful overview
of such work to the
early 2000s, see Cottrell 2004:2�8), but to explore some of the
themes and issues
which emerge from this area of study.
Several of the chapters in Stobart’s volume invoke a somewhat
binary characterisa-
tion of music studies that focuses on the relationship between
musicology on the one
hand and ethnomusicology on the other. Clearly, this only
captures a particular slice of

music studies broadly conceived: where in this binary would
one position music
psychology, popular music studies, performance studies, music
education or music
informatics, for instance?
1
Moreover, the correlates with cognate disciplines outside
music*media studies, history, anthropology, sociology,
psychology, linguistics, and so
on*can often be as strong as those between different areas of
music studies. These
comments notwithstanding, and however one conceives the field
of music studies and
its internal and external relationships, if one retains the
musicology/ethnomusicology
binary for the moment, there is much to suggest that we are
indeed working in an era
of methodological, if not disciplinary, convergence. Several
scholars use the term. Stokes,
for instance, notes the recent ‘convergence of people working in
different disciplines
and intellectual traditions on new musical subjects and objects’
(2008:207) and
Nicholas Cook, in a chapter in the same volume, observes that:
. . . a major convergence of interests between musicology and

ethnomusicology has
taken place, and [that] as a result there is as yet untapped
potential for the sharing
or cross-fertilization of methods for pursuing them. (2008:51)
As evidence for such convergence, Cook cites both the 2000
joint conference of the
American Musicological Society, the Society for
Ethnomusicology and other North
American scholarly music societies, at which it was often
difficult to tell which society
was sponsoring a particular session; and his experience of
reading two doctoral
dissertations by authors in distinct fields of music research but
whose theoretical
approaches and methodologies overlapped significantly. As will
be discussed below,
the articles in this volume tell a similar story. Tracing some of
the more significant
changes within musicology, Cook notes the ‘shift[ed,] in the
closing decades of the
twentieth century, towards the understanding of music in its
multiple cultural
contexts, embracing production, performance, reception, and all
other activities by
virtue of which music is constructed as a significant cultural

practice’ (2008:49);
Ethnomusicology Forum 287
greater scholarly reflexivity; increased attention to performance
(away from the
notated score); and particularly a move towards understanding
‘music as an agent of
meaning rather than just a reflection of it’, such that ‘music’s
meanings . . . [are
understood] as something constantly renewed and regenerated
through social usage’
(2008:56�57). Cook describes this as the
‘ethnomusicologization of musicology’
(2008:65), although of course not all of these changes
necessarily came via
ethnomusicology. The extent to which musicology has changed
over the last 15
years is made clear by the fact that Stock’s (1997a)
characterisation of the differences
between musicology and ethnomusicology now seems
surprisingly (and pleasingly)
dated if one looks at current work in the field. There is no doubt
that both
musicology and ethnomusicology have changed, and there has

certainly been
convergence: but its degree is debateable. The idea expressed
by Cook that
musicology and ethnomusicology have arrived at the same
place*but by different
routes, which has complicated their relationship*is not shared
by all. His now
(in)famous conclusion that ‘we are all musicologists now’ was
strongly contested at
the 2001 one-day conference of the British Forum for
Ethnomusicology at which
Cook presented an earlier version of his 2008 article, leading to
a re-formulation in
the published version to: ‘we are all ethnomusicologists now’
(bringing him more in
line with Frank Harrison’s much earlier 1963 statement that ‘it
is the function of all
musicology to be in fact ethnomusicology’, cited by Cook from
Lieberman 1997:200
[2008:65]). As distinctions of ‘insider’/‘outsider’ and self/other,
on which the
musicology/ethnomusicology divide was initially founded,
become increasingly
blurred and perhaps redundant, Cook concludes that
‘distinguishing between

musicology and ethnomusicology seems to me as hopeless as it
is pointless’
(2008:64). Amongst those who might concur one could list
Nettl, John Blacking,
Jim Samson and Shelemay, the latter arguing strongly for a
more integrated field of
music studies (Shelemay 1996). On the other hand, Kerman
(1985) and Stock
(1997a) are somewhat more sceptical, the former based on the
assertion that ‘Western
music is just too different from other musics’ (Kerman
1985:174)*with the
implication that ethnomusicologists only study ‘non-western’
music*the latter
based on differences in approach.
Much of the debate around these issues rests on an underlying
assumption that
convergence is in principle ‘a good thing’, if not always
possible. A somewhat different
perspective has recently been put forward by Georgina Born
(2010), who
characterises the debate as perhaps overly concerned with
achieving an affable
consensus*and describing Nicholas Cook (in his 2008 article) as
acting as a
‘marriage broker’ (2010:215). Instead, she asks whether, in ‘the

wished-for
rapprochement between the subdisciplines of music scholarship’
(209), ‘Do we
perhaps give up too much of the rich and idiosyncratic
patchwork of subdisciplinary
histories by suggesting such an integration? Do we suppress the
agonistic pleasures of
continuing inter-subdisciplinary dialogues?’ (2010:206).
Instead, she proposes a
‘relational musicology’ which draws on the productive tension
of the ‘agonistic�
antagonistic’ mode of interdisciplinarity in which:
288 L. Nooshin
. . . research is conceived neither as a synthesis nor in terms of
a disciplinary
division of labour, but as driven by an agonistic or antagonistic
relation to existing
forms of disciplinary knowledge and practice. Here,
interdisciplinarity springs from
a self-conscious dialogue with, criticism of, or opposition to,
the intellectual,
aesthetic, ethical or political limits of established disciplines, or
the status
of academic research in general . . . This does not mean that
what is produced
by such interdisciplinarity can be reduced to these antagonisms;
nor does it imply

any overtly conflictual relations between emergent
interdiscipline and prior
disciplinary formation. Rather, with the agonistic-antagonistic
mode we highlight
how this kind of interdisciplinary practice stems from a
commitment or desire to
contest or transcend the given epistemological and ontological
foundations of
historical disciplines*a move that makes the new interdiscipline
irreducible to its
‘antecedent disciplines’ . . . What is remarkable about the
agonistic-antagonistic
mode is that it is often intended to effect more radical shifts in
knowledge practices,
shifts that are at once epistemic and ontological. (Born
2010:211)
In asking what a truly integrated field of music studies might
look like, Born
questions whether earlier promises of sub-disciplinary dialogue
or integration (for
instance in Mark Everist and Nicholas Cook’s [1999] volume
Rethinking Music), have
delivered; she suggests that any such field would need to both
‘disrupt[ing] the
conceptual boundary between music and the social’ (221) and
engage more fully with
‘the sciences of the cultural, social and temporal, which is to
say anthropology,
sociology and history’ (2010:210) (some might argue that they

have been doing the
latter for many decades).
Notwithstanding these ongoing and healthy debates about the
relationship
between the various musicologies, work on the ground clearly
suggests that the
dividing line between musicology and ethnomusicology (if we
take that particular
binary) is less clear than ever. Scholars may continue to feel a
sense of belonging and
allegiance to particular disciplinary ‘homes’, but the work itself
becomes increasingly
difficult to categorise according to disciplinary boundaries. This
will be discussed
further in relation to the specific articles in this volume, in the
context of which
Bohlman’s observation almost two decades ago that ‘different
domains within the
study of music . . . no longer simply co-exist, but rather interact
to change the spatial
construction of the field. No domain is spared from the
approaches of its discursive
cohabitants*say, historical musicology from analysis,
ethnomusicology from history, or
music theory from cultural contexts’ (1993:435; emphasis

added) seems particularly
pertinent.
The Current Volume
The current volume marks an important milestone for
Ethnomusicology Forum as the
journal moves from two to three issues per year. It is also
something of a personal
watershed as I come to the end of my four-year term as journal
co-Editor. When
Andrew Killick and I assumed co-editorship of the journal in
September 2007, one of
our aims was to provide a platform for work which crossed or
contested disciplinary
boundaries, and we did this in various ways, including through
themed issues*for
example, the special volumes on ‘Screened Music: Global
Perspectives’ (in 2009) and
‘Ethnomusicology and the Music Industries’ (in 2010); by
inviting guest editors from
outside ethnomusicology, such as film music composer and
musicologist Miguel

Mera; by including interviews with music industry figures such
as Ben Mandelson (in
2010); and by publishing work by scholars from outside
ethnomusicology such as
popular musicologist Nicola Dibben (in 2009), music
psychologists Ian Cross (in
2010) and Ruth Herbert (in 2011), and music archaeologist
Graeme Lawson (in
2010). For myself in particular, seeking to break down what,
since the earliest days of
my ethnomusicological training, I have regarded as the
somewhat artificial
boundaries between musicology and ethnomusicology was
something of a mission.
Even before my editorial term started, I was exploring the idea
of a special issue that
would examine the intersection of ethnomusicology and
musicology by publishing
current research by both musicologists and ethnomusicologists
on some aspect
of western art music. Quite fortuitously, my appointment
coincided with the
2007 biennial conference of the International Council for
Traditional Music, held in

Vienna, where I heard a particularly inspiring presentation by
Eric Usner on the
politics of the 2006 Mozart Year, which had ended just six
months before the
conference.
2
The paper is published in extended form here. From this time, I
knew
that this was a topic with great potential, and I even toyed
briefly with the idea of a
special issue on the ethnomusicology of Mozart. As I started to
plan the current issue,
I became increasingly alerted both to musicologists undertaking
work which could be
described as broadly ethnomusicological, particularly in their
use of ethnographic
method, and of ethnomusicologists working on western art
music. This issue has had
a long gestation but it gives me the greatest pleasure that my
final task as co-Editor of
a journal that I played a small role in helping to establish 20
years ago should be to
produce a volume which resonates with some of my deepest
held scholarly

convictions*as someone who came to ethnomusicology as a
classically-trained
musician and for whom the study of ethnomusicology changed
forever how I would
experience ‘my’ music. Continuing in self-reflexive mode for a
moment, I also
wonder whether the urge to seek out commonalities and to
challenge binary
constructions such as East/West and
musicology/ethnomusicology*a challenge
which is, incidentally, precisely what the ethnomusicology of
western art music
does*arises partly from my own experiences as a post-colonial
‘other’ living in one
of the metropolitan power centres of the global ‘north’.
This volume comprises five main articles, followed by a short
reflective item by
(ethnomusicologist) Pirkko Moisala on the process of writing a
(largely musicolo-
gical) book about contemporary Finnnish composer Kaija
Saariaho. The main
articles begin with Rachel Beckles Willson’s study of European
and North American
music teachers working on Palestine’s West Bank as part of
international aid

investment in the region. The article examines some of the
issues around teachers’
motivations for taking up work in the West Bank, their
expectations and the
realities*political and social*once they arrive, as well as
considering what such
western musical intervention in the region means, whether
framed in terms of the
290 L. Nooshin
supposed civilising effects of western classical music or
offering children an
alternative to everyday violence. In particular, Beckles Willson
points to some
interesting resonances between the role that such teachers see
themselves as playing
and that of European mission in nineteenth-century Palestine.
The next article, by
Tina K. Ramnarine, explores the symphony orchestra as an
agent of civil society.
Beginning with a consideration of the metaphor of ‘orchestra as
society’, Ramnarine
focuses on three case studies of projects through which UK-
based orchestras have

sought to attract new audiences through various initiatives and
outreach
programmes, partly in response to an ageing and diminishing
listenership.
Ramnarine examines the potential of such programmes to effect
lasting social
change, and asks what role the orchestra can play in relation to
issues of race equality,
economic poverty, environmentalism, and so on. The next
article, by Melissa C.
Dobson and Stephanie Pitts, also focuses on new audiences,
reporting on a project
with ‘first-time attenders’ at western classical music concerts.
Project participants in
London and Sheffield attended a number of concerts, followed
by both focus group
discussions and one-to-one interviews. Dobson and Pitts present
the results of the
project, quoting extensively from participants on their
experiences of concert
attendance, experiences that were shaped by both musical and
social factors. Dobson
and Pitts’ conclusions have significant potential practical
application in terms of

understanding the needs and expectations of newcomers to
classical music concerts.
The authors also reflect on the interface between the social
psychology of music (in
which their work is rooted) and ethnomusicology, considering
what the latter can
bring to such a study, particularly in terms of ‘balancing the
desire to generalise
findings to populations with recognition of the benefits of
focusing on individual
listening experiences to gain deeper insights into this
multifarious phenomenon’. In
‘Ethnographic Research into Contemporary String Quartet
Rehearsal’, Amanda
Bayley traces a single work*Michael Finnnisy’s Second String
Quartet*‘from
composition, through rehearsal and performance, to reflections
on performance’, as
performed by the Kreutzer Quartet, focusing primarily on the
only rehearsal of the
piece, which was also attended by the composer. Asking how
‘methodologies from
ethnomusicology can advance our understanding of rehearsal
and performance in the
string quartet tradition’, Bayley uses quantitative and

qualitative methods (observa-
tion, interviews, questionnaires, recording of the rehearsal) to
examine various
aspects of the rehearsal process, including the structuring of
time, the kinds of
language used and interactions between the performers and
between performers and
composer, and the role of negotiation and collaboration in
shaping the musical work.
The result is a ‘rehearsal model’ which offers the possibility of
comparison with
rehearsals of other pieces, by other ensembles or in the context
of other performer�
composer collaborations. The final article, by Eric Usner,
explores the events marking
the Mozart Year 2006, the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s
birth*focusing on events in
Vienna*during which ‘Mozart’ became mobilised as a cultural
signifier, variously
presented and received as ‘tradition’, as a folklore spectacle for
tourists, as national
heritage, as commercial brand or commodity, and as
oppositional popular culture.

Through a detailed examination of the official WienMozart2006
festival, and the
associated New Crowned Hope ‘festival within a festival’,
Usner argues that the recent
reconfiguring of Vienna as a new site of the cosmopolitan is in
fact rooted in a much
older cosmopolitanism which marked fin de siècle Vienna at the
turn of the twentieth
century.
As might be expected from a group of authors, most of whom at
least partially self-
identify as cultural insiders*depending on how the ‘inside’ is
defined*several raise
issues around the problematic insider/outsider binary. For
instance, Bayley sees her
role ‘as a cultural insider and simultaneously outsider to the
Kreutzer Quartet . . . As
an experienced viola player in string quartets, as well as larger
chamber music
ensembles and orchestras, I write as an outsider with an
insider’s knowledge’. Such
fluid scholarly identities are particularly marked in this kind of
ethnography amongst
peers, as both Cottrell (in his landmark study of orchestral
musicians in London) and

Shelemay observe, and bring their own challenges:
The close and symbiotic relationship between those active in the
early music
movement and the scholars who were ostensibly studying the
scene provided a
challenging venture in ‘insider’ ethnography . . . the borders
between the identity of
the researcher and subject in the early music study can only be
described as blurred
. . . as members of the research team became at once musicians,
audience members,
or occasionally, critics. (Shelemay 2001:7�8)
In an interesting inversion, for Dobson and Pitts it is the
research participants who
are ‘outsiders’ to the music culture under study, whilst the
researchers are the
notional ‘insiders’. Adopting an ethnomusicological approach to
western art music
requires scholars to both re-assess their relationship to the
music culture and to
question some of their most fundamental assumptions, by (to
quote again from
Nettl) ‘look[ing] also at the familiar as if it were not’ (Nettl
1995:1). Discussing the
advantages and disadvantages of ‘insider’ ethnography, Cottrell
includes amongst the

latter the fact that:
Not having to learn a language might make one think less about
exactly what words
mean, how they are used and what this might reveal about
underlying concepts.
Being familiar with certain customs excludes the learning
process that comes
with not being familiar and the insights which may arise from
this learning . . .
(2004:16�17)
In her contribution to this volume, Moisala describes her
attempt to adopt such a
position*one ‘that does not take prior knowledge for
granted’*in relation to an
already familiar music:
My point of departure was that of a ‘learner’s perspective’, in
the sense that I
approached Saariaho’s music as a foreign cultural expression.
Even though I have
been interested in contemporary art music for decades and had
studied the scores
292 L. Nooshin
and other written documents in advance of my interviews in
order to prepare
questions, I purposely asked questions that did not assume a
common ground.
The original aim of this special issue was to …

16 APRIL/MAY 2020
Music is alchemy. It has the ability to profoundly change our
perceptions of and inter-actions with the world. It is a
kaleidoscope of views from a nearly infinite mosaic of
possibilities. Music can lift and transport us
to anywhere on the globe and then suddenly
drop our anchor at unexpectedly exotic locales.
Sitars place us immediately in India, gamelans
in Indonesia and didjeridoos in Australia.
Bagpipes march us to the Scottish Highlands,
while pan pipes climb the Andes. We know
these instruments have a home in the world,
but what is not readily apparent is their role
within those home cultures. That juncture of
place and role is where the discipline of ethno-
musicology lives. It focuses on that interaction
between music and culture, providing one
window into the soul of a people.
The discipline of ethnomusicology has been
defined in many ways. A recent Google search
of “What is ethnomusicology?” turned up 2.72
million results in .50 seconds.1 Some research-
ers look strictly at the music itself, its structure
and how it may be similar to or different than
Western music. Others look at how the music
is used within its culture as well as how it is
made and played. Musical cultures represent
a complex interplay between people, ideas,
religion, geography, technology, language and
more. It is an understatement to say that such
a continuum provides a very broad and active

range for research and performance.
Social Process
Ethnomusicologists examine music as a
social process to understand not only what
music is but what it means to its practitioners
and audiences. It is highly interdisciplinary,
with individuals often having training in
music, anthropology, folklore, performance
studies, dance, cultural studies,
gender studies, race or eth-
nic studies, and other
fields. The generosity
of the field allows for
many diverse special
interest groups, such as
cognitive ethnomusicolo-
gy (the cognitive study of
music, language, metaphor,
narrative and emotion),
ecomusicology (to support
social justice), economic
ethnomusicology, music and
violence, disability and deaf
studies, cultural revitalization
through music, and medical
ethnomusicology (health, heal-
ing and cultural practices) as
well as study of specific types
of music, such as Celtic music,
Balinese music, jazz or rap.2
What human beings always
have in common is their basic biology. All

humans are faced with the same problems:
How do we adapt to our environments, both
natural and social, to survive and prosper?
Defined as that set of attitudes, beliefs and
values that shape the behavior of a population,
culture provides stability and yet is fluid and
responsive to change. Culture guides us to “do
the right thing” to keep society functioning,
and it allows us to pass on that knowledge. It
changes when needed, but it also alters what
And
By Diane Baxter, NCTM
Ethnomusicology
Alchemy
Ethnomusicology
Alchemy
AMERICAN MUSIC TEACHER 17
18 APRIL/MAY 2020
we are likely to perceive or attend to. Music
is one cultural vehicle through which people
share the commonality of their experiences.
Ethnomusicologist Patrick Burke writes that
“most ethnomusicologists reject the common
claim that ‘music is a universal language.’
One might as well call talking a universal
language—lots of people around the world do

it, but they don’t automatically understand
one another. That said, music appears to be a
universal behavior and a universal preoccupa-
tion.”3 John Blacking states that “music is both
a social fact and multi-media communication:
there are many societies that have no word for
‘music’ and do not isolate it conceptually from
dance, drama, ritual, or costume...”4
In every society music expresses the inex-
pressible, without violence (blues, rap, heavy
metal, folk, marches, drumming). It bonds
people to their society and culture. Poise, con-
fidence, a sense of place, and team play are
taught to the young, while such performances
serve as reminders to the rest. It socializes
children by instructing them how to learn and
to acquire proper behavior and attention. It
unites and rallies people during crises, sup-
ports religion, encourages mating and coordi-
nates work. And sometimes it even entertains.
“Music is a basic need of human survival.
Music is one of the ways we make sense of
our lives, one of the ways in which we express
feelings when we have no words, a way for us
to understand things with our hearts when we
can’t with our minds.”5
Around the World
In many areas of the world, it is more
important that everyone in the society par-
ticipate in the music making than it is to
note their expertise. For the Maori of New
Zealand, music and dance are found together.
Traditionally, to sing without a purpose is

regarded as an evil omen. If there is no reason
to sing, then you don’t sing. For this reason,
traditional recordings are difficult to obtain.
While strict rhythm and proper vocal unison
are very important to the correct perfor-
mance of Maori music, this concern is not just
aesthetic. For the traditional Maori to break
the continuity of a song is to invite death or
disaster. Accuracy is crucial because you can
bring on harm from a supernatural power. In
other societies to sing without purpose can be
considered an expression of joy or of misery
and is seen as a basic human right. In reli-
gious settings, music can be only vocal, or only
instrumental, or essential or forbidden. It can
be socially affirming, or a protest. During the
1960s civil rights movement, the act of singing
together became the movement. The act of
music speaks power.
Native American music varies widely in
terms of geography, but certain generaliza-
tions hold. Music is an oral tradition, deeply
enmeshed in society, often integrating ceremo-
nial and social events. It can have supernatural
power. Song texts are often filled with voca-
bles (nonlexical syllables), therefore it is the act
of singing that holds the power. For example,
in the traditional Blackfoot culture a medicine
man may have a bundle of objects for curing
purposes. There is no power in the medicine
bundle itself, until the act of singing enables
interaction between the medicine man and the
supernatural world. Navajo music ranges from
personal songs for pleasure to deeply sacred

chants that can be sung only in the appropriate
ceremonial context. Bruno Nettl aptly points
out that “the rather athletic view of music
taken in Western culture, where star perfor-
mances by individual composers and perform-
ers and their ability to do very difficult things
is measured, is replaced in Native American
cultures with quite different values.”6
In North Indian Classical traditions, central
to the music is the belief that everything in the
universe moves in repeating cycles, endlessly
going through cycles of creation, dissolution
and recreation. Rhythmic patterns known as
tala are clear examples of this cyclical concept.
Patterns based on from 3 to 108 beats are used
as the foundation for performance, where as
much as 90% of the melodic material may be
improvised. These musical traditions can be
traced back nearly 2000 years, with origins
in the Vedic hymns. Ravi Shankar has written:
“To us, music can be a spiritual discipline on
the path to self-realization, for we follow the
traditional teaching that sound is God. By this
process individual consciousness can be ele-
vated to a realm of awareness where the reve-
lation of the true meaning of the universe—its
eternal and unchanging essence—can be joy-
fully experienced.”7 The concept that “sound is
Ethnomusicology And Alchemy
AMERICAN MUSIC TEACHER 19

God” is a profound realization of music’s criti-
cal role in the society.
In Bali, serious literature, poems and
prayers begin with the letter “ONG.” The
sound of this letter resonates through the
body, alerting all of one’s gods and demons
(your emotions, qualities and thoughts) to
alertness. Balinese music specialist Michael
Tenzer notes that “Music is ubiquitous in Bali;
its abundance is far out of proportion to the
dimensions of the island. The Hindu-Balinese
religion requires gamelan for the successful
completion of most of the tens of thousands
of ceremonies undertaken yearly.”8 Music is
simply a part of everyday life, whether it be to
accompany martial arts, to sell goods or to race
bulls. There is music for entertaining the gods
in festivals, to accompany offerings at a tem-
ple, to provide for cremated remains, even to
be played during a young woman’s ritual tooth
filing ceremony. In Bali, music and dance share
structures and terminology. They are wedded
together.
World Music in Films
The concept of world musics being combined
with other art forms is nowhere more evident
than in contemporary film, but it is an endeav-
or that is not approached lightly. After all, does
one approach a supernatural being lightly?
Film composers, orchestrators and arrangers
have become extremely skilled in thinking
globally.

Moana, the animated Disney movie released
in 2016, is set in Polynesia on a fictional
island. To be cognizant of culturally sensitive
issues, Disney formed and consulted with
Oceanic Story Trust, a group of advisors that
included academics, anthropologists, linguists,
historians and choreographers, as well as
“tattoo artists, navigators, fishermen, elders,
and artists.”9 Disney Animation sponsored
research trips to the South Pacific Islands of
Juri, Samoa, Tahiti, Moorea, New Zealand,
Bora Bora and Tetiaroa. “Every name in the
movie either comes from or was approved
by the Oceanic Story Trust. Moana’s name
means ‘of the sea.’ Every draft of the script,
every little change, was sent to the Oceanic
Story Trust to vet.”10 Most of the cast mem-
bers are Polynesian. The songs were written
in Samoan, Tokelauan and English by Opetaia
Foa’i, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mark Mancina.
Dave Metzger arranged and orchestrated all
of the music in the film. It took three full days
to record the percussion parts alone.11 Samoan
by birth, Opetaia Foa’i started a contemporary
music group called Te Vaka, which claims a
“distinct original sound and un-touristy devo-
tion to the South Pacific and the stories of its
ancestors.”12 Band members are featured in
many of the songs of Moana. This inclusion of
cultural sensitivities gives an indication of the
seriousness in trying to understand and repre-
sent various areas of the world without simply
appropriating materials.
Contemporary Compositions

The incorporation of world musical
traditions into contemporary composi-
tion is exemplified in Kevin Walczyk’s 5th
Symphony, Freedom From Fear: Images From
the Shoreline.13 The commissioned symphony
was to be centered around displaced peoples.
Walczyk thought of President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s address to the United Nations in
1941 when he spoke of four essential human
freedoms. The last of the four was freedom
from fear. The symphony’s four movements
are “The Relinquishing,” “Sands of White and
Black,” “Lullaby” and “Sea Crossings–Mother
of Exiles.” Two images of shorelines served
as the foundation for the second movement.
The first is a photograph entitled “Three
Americans,” which appeared in a September
1943 Life magazine article. It depicted the bat-
tle of Buna-Gona in Papua, New Guinea, and
was the first image of dead Americans that
President Roosevelt allowed to be published
during World War II. Walczyk incorporated
two percussion instruments indigenous to
Papua, New Guinea: log drums, known as
“slit” drums, and a bullroarer. “In Papua New
Guinea, bullroarers hold a traditional place of
honor in men’s ceremonial clubhouses. The
Namau people of the Purari River Delta used
them during funerals of important men and
called them imunu viki (‘weeping spirits’).”14
The log drums and bullroarer were used to
represent the “weeping spirits” of the three
dead soldiers.
The second image shows protesters in Biloxi,

Reconsidering Theory and Practice in Ethnomusicology: Applying, Advocating, and Engaging Beyond Academia

Reconsidering Theory and Practice in Ethnomusicology: Applying, Advocating, and Engaging Beyond Academia

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