BRITISH FORUM FOR ETHNOMUSICOLOGY & ROYAL HOLLOWAY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
one-day conference
THE NEW (ETHNO)MUSICOLOGIES
The Arts Building, Royal Holloway University of London
Saturday 17th November 2001
10.00 coffee & registration (10.25 welcome)
SESSION 1. Chair: Tina Ramnarine (University of Belfast)
10.30 John Baily (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Ethnomusicology, bimusicality, and performance practice
11.00 Robert Kwami (Institute of Education, University of London)
Intercultural Musicology - the way forward?
11.30 coffee
SESSION 2. Chair: Barley Norton (Roehampton University)
12.00 Martin Clayton (Open University)
Sound and theory: Plotting a phonocentric ethnomusicology
12.30 Nicolas Cook (University of Southampton)
We are all ethnomusicologists now
1.00
2.00
lunch
SESSION 3. Chair: Jim Samson (Bristol/Royal Holloway)
Philip Bohlman (University of Chicago)
Other Ethnomusicologies, Another Musicology: The Serious Play of
Disciplinary Alterity
2.30
Abbi Wood (University of Cambridge)
E-fieldwork: a paradigm for the twenty-first century?
3.00
tea
3.30
SESSION 4. Chair: Henry Stobart (Royal Holloway)
Jonathan Stock (University of Sheffield)
Ethnomusicology Now and Soon: Some Assumptions on the Shape of
Things to Come
4.00
ROUND TABLE: ‘Exorcising the Ancestors’ – followed by open discussion
Julie Brown (Royal Holloway), Gerry Farrell (City University),
Caroline Bithell (University of Bangor), and David Treece (King’s
College, London)
4.45
break
5.00
AFRICAN MUSIC WORKSHOP - Mandy Carver & Geoffrey Tracey
ABSTRACTS
Ethnomusicology, Bimusicality and Performance Practice
John Baily (Goldsmiths College, University of London
Amongst various areas for the future development of ethnomusicology there seems to be
a growing interest in performance. Hood's original argument for acquiring bimusicality
was that "training in basic musicianship is fundamental to any kind of musical
scholarship". Beyond that, a number of ethnomusicologists have used learning to perform
as a research technique in ethnomusicological fieldwork. This paper examines a number
of benefits that may follow from learning to perform, and will argue that it should form a
central place in ethnomusicological research methodology. Furthermore, learning to
perform should not simply be seen as a way of conducting fieldwork; achieving a high
level of performance ability in a particular genre should be one of the goals of the
ethnomusicologist. In the early stages of engagement with another music culture
performance (as a research technique) undoubtedly informs the formulation of theory; but
later on we find that theoretical realisations inform performance. These issues will be
discussed with reference to performance as a component of a masters programme in
ethnomusicology, and as the main objective in a doctoral programme in performance
practice.
Other Ethnomusicologies, Another Musicology:
The Serious Play of Disciplinary Alterity
Philip V. Bohlman (University of Chicago)
What makes ethnomusicology ‘new’ at any given moment in its history? Does, in fact,
the will to engage with otherness and to claim disciplinary identity make it necessary for
the field to break with its past in order to lay claim to a distinctive future? Do
disciplinary newness and innovation result from a desire for scientific turf that denies
music a privileged or essentialized position? In the present moment of announcements
and pronouncements about new disciplines, has ethnomusicology truly begun to move in
new directions or are we witnessing attempts to rescue newness from a more pervasive
otherness?
More to refine than to answer such questions, this paper will be an
historiographical examination of moments when ethnomusicology has consciously
responded to revolutionary moments marked by claims of newness, especially those that
resonate with more sweeping intellectual movements predicated on a ‘new science’ (e.g.,
Vico or Herder at the beginning and end of the eighteenth century). Whereas my earlier
attempts to look comprehensively at the intellectual history of ethnomusicology have
called for greater attention to ‘persistent paradigms’, this paper assumes what many
might regard as a new approach to the field’s past, one which looks more critically at the
insistent rhetoric of innovation that has urged many ethnomusicologists to break with
rather than maintain tradition. I take the metaphors of my title seriously, structuring the
paper as an historical drama that might provide a discursive framework to represent the
long-overdue history of ethnomusicology.
Sound and theory: Plotting a phonocentric ethnomusicology
Martin Clayton (Open University)
Since the days of Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, our field has drawn on the methods
and theories of several other disciplines, as comparative musicologists and
ethnomusicologists have struggled to make their voices heard in Western academic
discourse. Beginning with Stumpf, scholars applied techniques derived from
experimental psychology, allied to a speculative evolutionist view of music history, in
establishing what they hoped would be an important new scientific discipline. Their
paradigm has been replaced by a succession of models, borrowed from disciplines
inclding anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and latterly cultural studies. Each of these
adaptations has been an advance in terms of increasing methodological sophistication,
and has contributed to our understanding of musical phenomena. Nonethless,
ethnomusicology has a poor record when it comes to generating intellectual
breakthroughs.
This paper argues that ethnomusicologists need to find the confidence to pursue
theories grounded in real human experiences of organised sound, rather than adapting
models based on studies of linguistic communication, visual representations or socioeconomic processes. We need to develop new phonocentric paradigms, models based on
listening rather than looking, on musical interaction rather than verbal communication. I
will suggest that work in other fields may help to point the way towards such paradigms
but that it cannot provide ready-made models for our adaptation. We need theories of
music grounded in the phenomenology of sound; such theories can only be developed
and tested through the application of ethnographic methods; and they need to ask similar
questions of 'music' in very different environments. In other words, the new
ethnomusicology should also be the new new musicology.
We Are All Ethnomusicologists Now
Nicholas Cook (University of Southampton)
It would be easy to represent the 'New' musicology as the transfer to the Western classical
tradition of approaches and insights already commonplace in ethnomusicology; it didn't
happen that way, though, and instead a great many wheels were reinvented. All the same,
the result is a convergence of aims and assumptions perhaps greater than at any time
since comparative musicology turned into ethnomusicology, a point I illustrate through
discussion of (1) what Titon terms the 'new fieldwork' and (2) ongoing attempts to
reconceive Western classical music as a perfoming art. If this reflects an increasing
openness to ethnomusicological values on the part of traditional musicologists, it also
reflects the undermining of once secure distinctions of 'self' and 'other' built into the
definition of ethnomusicology: the result is the inclusiveness exemplified by Titon's
definition of fieldwork as 'experiencing and understanding music'. My title, with its nod
at Nathan Glazer's We are All Multiculturalists Now, expresses the obvious conclusion—
except that I shall suggest that there might be an even more obvious one….
Intercultural Musicology - the way forward?
Robert Mawuena Kwami (Institute of Education, University of London)
Commentators such as John Blacking and Akin Euba have argued that the term
ethnomusicology is inappropriate. Even if, as a discipline, the coverage of the 'beast'
embraces Western pop and classical, jazz, and other Western musics, the term is flawed
in several grounds. Some of these grounds will be explored, and it will be argued that
'intercultural musicology is a more suitable replacement, one that can accommodate all
musicological studies and endeavours, and is more appropriate in and for a new
millennium.
Ethnomusicology Now and Soon:
Some Assumptions on the Shape of Things to Come
Jonathan P. J. Stock (University of Sheffield)
Merriam identifies a series of assumptions (1964:37-39) that offer a convenient starting
point for a consideration of the changes that might be either underway or on the way at
present. Merriam proposed that ethnomusicology needed to become an objective science
of human musical behaviour on the widest scale. A fusion of both field and laboratory
research was required. So too was a clearer awareness of the need for research aims, and
the better designing of fieldwork with these in mind. Without them, ethnomusicology
amounted to no more than the unanalytical gathering of musical sound data or "armchair
ethnomusicology", wherein commercial recordings are analysed by lab specialists with
little knowledge of the broader musical scene.
This paper produces its own set of assumptions about the state of this now muchly (yet
still unevenly) theorised discipline. Specific attention is given to the following
characteristics: music analysis (and its role as a tool that can critically interrogate
fieldwork observations); criticism (and our role as expert commentators on individual
musical performers, recordings or works); writing (and the questions of genre and voice);
history (and the implications for the discipline of historical research); and comparison
(and the role in the discipline of the broader frame of reference).
E-fieldwork: a paradigm for the twenty-first century?
Abigail Wood (Cambridge University)
During the past decade, the incorporation of the Internet into daily life has had a huge
impact in the Western world, changing the way we think about space, information and
communication. The Net plays an increasing role in many aspects of music culture, from
advertisement and vending via websites to discussion in newsgroups and the electronic
distribution of music itself. With reference to my own research on contemporary Yiddish
song, this paper will explore the various uses of the Internet by a dispersed community to
discuss, promote and distribute its music. Via a case study of a vibrant online music
community, the Jewish music discussion list hosted by shamash.org, I shall discuss the
benefits and challenges of using online interaction, both as a participant and as a
observer, in ethnomusicological research.