SEM History Post

After looking through Ethnomusicology articles from the 1950s and the 1970s, it became clear to me that not was ethnomusicology a new, developing field in the 1950s, but in even just two decades it grew and expanded to encompass a completely different kind of study.

The articles in the 1950s seem heavily focused on musical technique. Many of the authors talk about specifics of scales, such as ascending versus descending, or scale degrees. They often compare the specific differences between countries or continents. I found that the authors particularly liked to address "Western versus Non-Western", or "American versus European". This to me seems like a very narrow minded way of thinking, and presents many of the issues the articles we have read for class discussed themselves. In particular, I do not think the term comparative musicology had been completely abandoned yet. Some of the articles talk about moving away from the idea of it, but most of the articles still describe methods that come off as comparative to me. Even just mentioning the scales of different countries in comparison to America sets a tone of power, especially be discussing what the most common scales are. Does it matter which ones are the most common? Does that make them "better" than those which are uncommon? I understand this is important in terms of understanding how musical methods may have spread or influenced each other over time, but the way in which it is presented does not address this.

The articles in the 1970s focus much more on the idea that ethnomusicology includes essentially anything, any way of life or tradition or culture, that relates to music. The articles have moved away from the specifics of technique to addressing more of what music means to society. In the 1950s articles, authors try and convince the readers that ethnomusicology is an interdisciplinary study, but I didn't find their arguments very convincing. They give you the what, but not the how. In the 1970s articles, however, the authors really spend more time discussing the methods as they pertain to different fields. This to me showed how much the field grew to really associate itself with anthropology. You can also tell that ethnomusicologists have really abandoned the term comparative musicology by this time. Another major difference I noticed was simply how the authors talked about the term ethnomusicology. In the 1950s, the authors made much more of an effort to specifically describe what the word meant, what people in the field did, and its applications in society. However, in the 1970s, authors are careful in how they describe ethnomusicology, and many of them describe it as a somewhat ambiguous term/study that can't be accurately described without going against the purpose of the study itself. They also seem much more careful in how they address other cultures so as to not have a superiority complex over the societies they are studying. This goes hand in hand with abandoning comparative musicology and focusing more on integration and observation.