1The Harmless Drudge:

Defining Ethnomusicology

Definitions

For years, people have been asking me the question: "You're an ethnomusi­cologist?" Shortly after 1950 it was likely to be accompanied by expressionsof wonder and of the belief that I was somehow involved with "folk" music,with "primitive music," and particularly with "ancient music," and also thatI must have a great deal of companionship with a tape recorder. By 1960 thequestioner would likely bring up participation in an Indonesian gamelan, orperhaps an ability to play many ofthe world's odd instruments. In the 1970S,the conversation might well include the term "ethnic" music or even the et­ymologically outrageous "ethnomusic," and in the eighties and nineties, freeassociation might lead to "diversity" and "world music."

I have always found it hard to come to a precise, concise, and readily intel­ligible definition. Dictionaries differ considerably but espouse limited views.In the 120 years in which modern ethnomusicology can be said to have existed,since pioneer works such as those of Ellis (1885), Baker (1882), and Stumpf(1886), attitudes and orientations have changed greatly, and so has the name,from something very briefly called Musikologie (in the 1880s), to "comparativemusicology" (through about 1950), then to "ethno-musicology" (1950-ca.1956), quickly to "ethnomusicology" (removing the hyphen actually was anideological move trying to signal disciplinary independence), with suggestionssuch as "cultural musicology" (Kerman 1985) and "socio-musicology" (Feld1984) occasionally thrown in. The changes in name paralleled changes in in­tellectual orientation and emphasis.

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4 THE MUSICS OF THE WORLD

It is difficult to find a single, simple definition, to which most people inthis field would subscribe, and thus ethnomusicologists have been perhapsexcessively concerned with defining themselves. Alan P. Merriam, the scholarin the history of ethnomusicology most concerned with definition and theas'sociated problems of basic orientation, frequently (Merriam 1960, 1964:3-36, 1969b, 1975) cited the need for ethnomusicologists to look carefully atwhat they had done and wished to do in order to move in concerted fash­ion toward their goals. In a major essay discussing the history of definitions,Merriam (1977a) actually brought together a large number of separate state­ments defining the limits, the major thrust, the practicality, and the ideol­ogy of ethnomusicology (see also Myers 1992: 3,7-9; Simon 1978).

There are various types of definitions: Some tell what each ethnomusi­cologist must do or be in order to merit the title, and some synthesize whatthe entire group does. Others focus on what has transpired in terms of re­search activity, or on what should in fact have been done, or what must even­tually be done. They define in terms ofa body ofdata to be gathered and stud­ied, or of activities undertaken by typical scholars, or again by the questionsthat are asked of the raw data. Some seek to broaden limits, including withinthe scope of ethnomusicology all sorts of things also claimed by other fieldsor disciplines, while others envision narrow specialization. A scholar findingorder among all of these definitions (Merriam cites over forty, but he stoppedin 1976) would surely become what Samuel Johnson called (referring to him­self, the lexicographer) a «harmless drudge." It's not, lest you've been misin­terpreting the title of this chapter, the ethnomusicologists who claim or de­serve that title.

What, specifically, are some of these definitions, and how can one groupthem? In their briefest form, without elaboration or commentary: Those whoseek-or sought-to define ethnomusicology by the material that is contem­plated have opted for one of these alternatives: (1) folk music, and music thatused to be called «primitive," that is, tribal, indigenous, or possibly ancientmusic; (2) non-Western and folk music; (3) all music outside the investigator'sown culture; (4) all music that lives in oral tradition; (5) all music of a givenlocality, as in «the ethnomusicology of Tokyo"; (6) the music that given pop­ulation groups regard as their particular property, for example, «black" musicof the United States; (7) all contemporary music (Chase 1958); and (8) allhuman music. Those focusing on type ofactivity might choose among the fol­lowing: (1) comparative study (of musical systems and cultures), a basicallymusicological activity; (2) comprehensive analysis of the music and musicalculture of one society-essentially anthropological; (3) the study of musics

DEFINING ETHNOMUSICOLOGY 5

as systems, perhaps systems of signs, an activity related to linguistics or semi­otics; (4) the study of music in or as culture, or perhaps music in its culturalcontext, with techniques derived from anthropology, often called "anthro­pology ofmusic"; and (5) historical study ofmusics outside the realm ofWest­ern classical music, using approaches ofhistorians, area studies specialists, andfolklorists. Definitions that look ai our ultimate goals might include (1) thesearch for universals; (2) the description of"all factors which generate the pat­tern of sound produced by a single composer or society" (Blacking 1970: 69);

and even (3) a "science of music history," aiming at the establishment of lawsgoverning musical development and change. This sampling provides an ideaof the number and variety of definitions and approaches. Beyond this, how­ever, the disciplinary identity of ethnomusicology is often the subject of de­bate. Opinions: Ethnomusicology is (1) a full-fledged discipline; (2) a branchof musicology, or (3) of anthropology; (4) an interdisciplinary field; (5) thekind ofall-encompassing discipline that "musicology" ought to be, but hasn'tbecome.

No wonder that preoccupation with identity has been a major activity.When attending meetings of the Society of Ethnomusicology, the largest or­ganization of the field, I used to be struck by the number of specialized pa­pers that began with statements giving the speakers' definition of and gen­eral orientation toward the field. Since about 1985, however, the obsession withdefining ethnomusicology has declined, and some have decided to stop wor­rying about it while others have come to agree on a mainstream ofthrusts andemphases. One might also define a field of research by the kinds of things aboutwhich its people argue and debate; in a sense, this series of essays is itself asomewhat clumsy attempt to define ethnomusicology in terms of some of itsabiding issues, concepts, questions, and problem areas of general concern.

Who They Are and What They Actually Do

There may be many definitions, but what those who call themselves ethno­musicologists or who otherwise associate themselves with this field actuallydo has been fairly clear. Who are they? The Society for Ethnomusicology hasbeen conducting a survey as yet incomplete at the time of this writing. De­scriptions of the ethnomusicological population between around 1950 and1980 may be found in Myers (1992) and Hood (1971). Let me try an impres­sionistic overview of the present. Of those working in this field since about1980, many have an initial background in academic music, as students ofper-

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6 THE MUSICS OF THE WORLD

formance, theory, or composition; in North America, this may culminate ina bachelor's degree in music. But increasingly, they have also come from back­grounds in popular music, and some are motivated by prolonged residence­perhaps as teenagers-abroad. A good many also come to this field from ex­posure to third-world cultures as members of the Peace Corps, as teachersofEnglish abroad, in missionary work. Typically, they seem to me to have beenturned on to the field by the love of or fascination with some music. Thereusually soon follows some kind of exposure to a culture or society, and thenoften more formal study ofculture, broadly speaking, perhaps including grad­uate study of anthropology, or of a field of area studies such as South Asia,Mrica, the Middle East. Some turn to ethnomusicology after a period ofliv­ing in a non-Western culture as teachers of Western music. Many studentsof ethnomusicology very quickly form a specialized allegiance to the musicof a particular culture or area, and even a particular genre of music-PlainsIndian powwow dances, Javanese gamelan music, North Indian classical in­strumental music, Moroccan rai.

Most ethnomusicologists, in any event, undertake graduate study in thisfield; there aren't many (though there once were) scholars in other disci­plines----music history, anthropology-who, in midcareer as professionals,switched lanes and moved to ethnomusicology. Graduate curricula in eth­nomusicology vary considerably. Some of the leading ones are free-standingprograms in their universities, many are attached to music departments andmay be considered one ofa number ofspecializations within musicology, anda few are in anthropology, popular culture, media studies, and folklore de­partments or programs. But while the orientations of these programs inNorth America varied greatly when they first came into existence in the 1950Sand 1960s, and they still differ considerably, there has gradually developed akind of mainstream, a central core of preparation, that includes some studyofperformance of the music in which one plans to undertake research-andperhaps incidentally also performance ofother noncanonic musics that maybe available-and considerable reading and study ofanthropology, and ofan­thropologically related theory. Near the end of one's graduate study one or­dinarily undertakes field research in a society or culture or subculture, or per­haps a genre or repertoryin which one later becomes known as a specialist.This dissertation fieldwork, which is preceded by cultural and linguisticpreparation, usually involves a year or more of residence in the field venue.Analysis of collected data used to include automatically the transcription ofrecordings into musical notation, and this is still important, though the ar-

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DEFINING ETHNOMUSICOLOGY 7

senal of techniques has been widened. Arriving at musical insights, and­more difficult-developing a procedure for the analysis of human activitiesand attitudes revolving about the musical sounds, should follow, and the finalstage in this research process is the interpretation of data in accordance withcertain defined theoretical approaches or positions.

Most ethnomusicologists, Ph.D. in hand, seek teaching positions in highereducation, though other kinds ofwork-librarianship, museology, the record­ing industry, public service of various sorts, publishing-are also available.Ethnomusicologists appointed to teaching positions are almost always assigneda course in "musics of the world," or at least something going far beyond thescope of their specialized research, along with something more in their par­ticular line of expertise. Advanced courses may be devoted to world areas­for example, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa-or they may be topical (e.g.,world perspectives of children's music, improvised music around the world,or the study-on a global basis-of musical change). Interestingly, it seemsthat in middle age, many ethnomusicologists add a second world area to theirfields ofexpertise; for myself, I started with Native American music and, at theage of thirty-nine, added the classical music of Iran. Among my colleagues,Thomas Turino, first an Andeanist, added the music ofEastAfrica, and CharlesCapwell added Indonesia to South Asia. Paul Berliner, an authority on East M­rican mbira music, became, as well, an authority on jazz. I wish I could assertthat elderly ethnomusicologists become wiser and more inclined to take broadand long views of the world of music, but I'm not so sure.

A typical ethnomusicologist's profile? Despite all diversity, a good manyof my colleagues will recognize themselves here. As for the definitions citedabove, there may be a lot of them, but ethnomusicologists really aren't allthat different from each other. There is often a gap between what ethno­musicologists do and what, by their own definition, they claim to do or hopesome day to accomplish.

What most of them actually do is to carry out research about non­Western, folk, popular, and vernacular music, taking into account both themusic itself, as sound, and how it interacts with other things that people do­that's really what we mean by "music in culture." However we define theseterms, they are what authors in such journals as Ethnomusicology, World ofMusic, and Asian Music actually write about. The definition of ethnomusi­cology as the study of non-Western and folk music, although widely criti­cized, is descriptively correct. On the other hand, the definition as study ofmusic outside one's own culture is not, for Asian and African scholars who

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8 THE MUSICS OF THE WORLD

call themselves ethnomusicologists typically do study their own music (seechapter 14 for what «own" may mean), but when they study the Europeanmusic that is outside their own culture, they prefer avoiding the term, in­stead calling themselves music historians or just musicologists.

Ethnomusicologists are supremely interested in music as a component ofculture. For some time-perhaps the period between 1950 and 1970 is themost indicative-they tended! to divide themselves into two groups, fre­quentlyat odds, one concentrating on the music «itself," the other on the cul­tural context. The first typically felt that they were properly studying the mainpoint of focus, the music itself, in its cultural context, looking down on theseother «contextualists" as amateurs unable to deal directly with music, whilethe others, espousing an anthropological approach, considered their oppo­site numbers to be naive, unable even to understand the musical artifact be­cause they could not approach it as a product ofculture, and unwilling to dealwith musical concepts, attitudes, or forms ofbehavior other than the piece ofmusic itself. After about 1980, the two groups tended to merge, but even inearlier times, I do not know of any ethnomusicologists who did not, in theirtotal commitments, have a major interest in music as an aspect ofhuman cul­ture. Anthropologists, as a basic technique of their profession, know how toanalyze the interaction of various domains in culture; musicologists are dis­tinguished by their fundamental ability to make sophisticated analyses ofmu­sical artifacts. Most ethnomusicologists try to be both.

Most academic ethnomusicologists in North America associate themselveswith music schools and departments; but many of the intellectual leaders comefrom anthropology. Yet, as the following chapters examine principal issues thatethnomusicologists confront, it will become evident that this is a field whichfrequently asks questions that are actually fundamental to musicology, the dis­cipline that encompasses all kinds ofmusic scholarship. Ofcourse, many schol­ars concerned with music quite justly see themselves not as musicologists atall, but as anthropologists, folklorists, sociologists, linguists; and yet, when en­gaging in ethnomusicological work, they are contributing to this central coreofmusicological activity (see the essays in Blum 1987; Cook and Everist 1999).

To be sure, they are at the same time making contributions to their home dis­ciplines, such as anthropology and folklore, but typically their findings are notas central to these fields as they are to musicology. Ethnomusicology may func­tion well as an independent field, and surely it has multiple disciplinary asso­ciations, but I strongly believe that ethnomusicological findings, insights, andtheories, no matter to whatever other disciplines they may also contribute, havemade their greatest contributions to musicology.

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DEFINING ETHNOMUSICOLOGY 9

The first generations of ethnomusicologists, from around 1900 to maybe1970, were seen as academic oddballs involved in an arcane subject of no in­terest outside the academy (or even inside). After 1960, they tried to make theirmusics known by issuing records and promoting concerts (of, say, Indian,Japanese, Arabic, West African musics), and I would assert that they playeda role in the rapidly increasing interchanges of musics that led to the stylesand the culture of ((world music''- as a category in the listening habits ofWest­ern society. So now, while few outsiders actually know exactly what it is thatthey do in their lives, ethnomusicologists are a concept and a term known toall levels of education, in the mass media, in areas of government. The worldof music has changed incredibly since the 1980s, and ethnomusicologists arerecognized as having contributed to these changes, and sought as interpretersof what has happened. Their work has contributed greatly to what is nowtaught in public school music programs, to the variety of musics availableon recordings to all, and to the resources used by composers ofconcert music.

But ethnomusicology is actually not all that easily separated conceptuallyfrom historical musicology-what is usually called ((musicology." All musi­cologists actually deal in some respects with music as sound and in culture.And all dictionary definitions of musicology include the work that ethno­musicologists do. There are two main attitudes that really distinguish ethno­musicologists in what they actually do from other musical scholarship.

One is the centrality of fieldwork. It wasn't always so. We began in the nine­teenth century with a tendency to speculate on the basis of little supportingevidence, moving around 1900 to ((armchair" research, in which the ethno­musicologist analyzed materials collected and recorded in the field by oth­ers-usually anthropologists and missionaries. But as the twentieth centuryprogressed, fieldwork became increasingly essential and, after World War II,a sine qua non of the ethnomusicologist's own style of life and study. Ofcourse face-to-face investigation of exotic music and musicians was knownearlier, and even in the ((armchair" period most ethnomusicologists did ven­ture into the ((field" or at least recognized the desirability of doing so.

Today it is taken for granted that each ethnomusicologist must have somefield research experience, and that most studies are based on the researcher'sown fieldwork. But considering economic and political developments since1980, the difficulty of doing research in many parts of the world, and the factthat the world's societies produce recordings and publications of their own,it is possible that in the future the armchair will become part of our furniture.

The kind and quality of fieldwork on which given research is based have aprofound effect on the conclusions, but ethnomusicological publications-

10 THE MUSICS OF THE WORLD

particularly those from before 1990-rarely tell much about the proceduresused in the field (see chapters 10-11). They may give data such as names of in­formants and teachers, machinery used to record or film, questionnaires, butrarely the whole story of how it really felt. There is something curious aboutthe combination of centrality and mystery in this hallmark ofethnomusico­logical life. As the primary technique for data gathering, fieldwork also hasbroader significance as the ethnomusicologist's bridge to the cultural ((other"(which includes distant lands as well as societies close to home). It's a tru­ism: Exposure to another culture stimulates empathy with both the strange­ness and the common humanity, of another society of people, and inciden­tally with the complexity of the music and musical life in what may from adistance seem a simple situation. We believe that this understanding, once ithas been gained in a particular culture, will carryover to further work notbased on field research, that it will help to evaluate publications by others thatmay be based on fieldwork and provide insights necessary for guiding thefieldwork of students who investigate societies with which the teacher is notdirectly acquainted. All of this is, of course, tied to the fact that most ethno­musicologists study cultures outside their own, and to the resulting assump­tion that there is a dichotomy between one's own culture and all others, thelatter in a certain sense all alike. This position has been widely critiqued in re­cent literature (going back to positions of the philosopher Antonio Gramcsi1971, and summarized by Slobin 1992a; see chapter 15 here). Epistemologicallyour approach to foreign cultures initially lumps them into a single category;we begin by dividing the world into categories of "ours" and "not ours," into"familiar" and "strange." Later we try to overcome this simplistic view.

The second central attitude is the maintenance of an interculturally com­parative perspective. Ethnomusicologists don't spend their time compar­ing the musics of different societies, and they certainly don't compare inorder to determine who is better at this or that aspect of music-making. Butthey look at each musical culture from a viewpoint that relates it to the worldofmusic, a world comprised of a multitude of musical cultures that are alikein some ways and different in others, and they believe that insight can begained from comparison. A comparative perspective, yes; but when it comesto brass tacks, what kinds of comparison are significant, and whether thereis a good method for comparing musics, these are questions the literaturehas generally avoided. The validity of comparative study has been debated(and the debates are followed in chapter 6). But to me, an interculturallycomparative perspective is, like fieldwork, a hallmark of ethnomusicology.

DEFI N I NG ETH NOMUSICOLOGY 11

Coming to Terms

Merriam (1977a: 192-93) believed that the terminological change to "ethno­musicology," around 1950, came from the recognition that this field is nomore comparative than others, that comparison can be made only after thethings to be compared are well understood in themselves, and that, in the end,comparison across cultural boundaries might be impossible because the mu­sics and cultures of the world are unique. In his classic book The Anthropol­ogy ofMusic (1964: 52-53) he also pointed out that most of the general pub­lications of ethnomusicology do not deal with methods and techniques ofcomparative study (Wiora 1975 and many essays in the Garland Encyclope­dia from ca. 2000 notwithstanding). At the same time, it is difficult to findspecialized studies that do not in some way, at least by implication, make useof intercultural comparison as a way of gaining and presenting insights. Theproponents of comparative study, accepting the criticisms given here, never­theless appear to consider the benefits of the comparative view so great thatthey feel it worth their while to indulge it.

But the adoption of the term «ethnomusicology" as a replacement for«comparative musicology" may have-causes additional to those suggested byMerriam. I don't question the reasoning of Jaap Kunst, who is generally re­garded as the first to have used the new term prominently in print (Kunst 1950:7); he did so, he says, because comparative musicology is not especially com­parative. But why then was the new term adopted so quickly, and particularlyby Americans, who seem to have been the first to adopt it officially?

The participation of a number of anthropologists in the American lead­ership of comparative musicology seems likely to have favored the use of aterm paralleling the names of several anthropological subfields: ethnolin­guistics and ethnohistory, with others, such as ethnobotany and ethno­science, coming later. Among the academic disciplines around 1950, anthro­pology had greater prestige than did musicology, itself often misunderstoodeven in midcentury. Musicologists, after all, were seen as the academic SimonLegrees for students of musical performance, and musicological study was

.frequently regarded as the refuge of the unsuccessful player or composer. Thenew term attractively symbolized association with anthropology or some­thing that sounded anthropological. Nationalism too may have played a part.Americans were proud of their significant contributions to non-Western andfolk music research between 1930 and about 1955, in comparison to their more

12 THE MUSICS OF THE WORLD

modest work as historians ofWestern music. They might have needed a termthat expressed their special role, that was not simply a translation of the es­tablished German term "vergleichende Musikwissenschaft." The fact that onewas dealing with a special kind of music, low in the hierarchy of musics withwhich the conventional musicologist dealt, may also have stimulated the needfor a special term, a whole word, "ethnornusicology," instead ofa term merelydesignating a subfield of musicology that dealt, by implication, with "sub­musics" worthy only of being compared with the great art music of Europe.

But whatever the attitude toward comparison and its role in the devel­opment of a self-image, ethnomusicologists use it to generalize about worldmusic. They are moderately effective here; before their advent, the same gen­eralizations were made by philosophers and sociologists and historians ofEuropean music, and they could often be falsified by mere reference to stan­dard descriptions of non-European cultures. Most of the comparisons foundin the ethnomusicologicalliterature involve observations of change and itsprocesses, or questions of origin, and thus we may conclude that most of thegeneralizing done in this field has some kind of relevance to history. Theultimate contribution of comparative study of musics provides central in­sights into the understanding of the world of music-how it exists in thepresent and how it came to be.

A Credo

I have talked about the multiplicity ofdefinitions, the different ways ofdefin­ing a discipline, the history of the term "ethnomusicology," the principal ac­tivities of ethnomusicologists, and the kinds of people who eventually findthemselves in this field. Time for me to try my hand at my own definition,or at least give the one that is central to this book. It's a two-pronged defini­tion, to which are added two corollaries, and I think it is probably accept­able to at least some of my colleagues, and so I should like to tie it to certainbeliefs and understandings that might be considered a kind of credo.

1. For one thing, ethnomusicology is the study ofmusic in culture. A conceptthat has its problems, when examined carefully (as by Martin Stokes in TheNew Grove Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians 2001, 8:386-88), but in the endI think it holds up. Ethnomusicologists believe that music must be under­stood as a part of culture, as a product of human society, and.while manypieces of research do not directly address the problem, we insist on this be-

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DEFINING ETHNOMUSICOLOGY 13

lief as an essential ingredient ofour overall approach. We are interested in theway in which a society musically defines itself, in its taxonomy of music, itsideas of what music does, how it should be, and also in the way a societychanges its music, relates to, absorbs, and influences other musics. We stressthe understanding of musical change, less in terms of the events than in theprocesses. /

2. Just as important, ethnomusicology is the study ofthe world's musics froma comparative and relativistic perspective. We endeavor to study total musicalsystems and, in order to comprehend them, follow a comparative approach,believing that comparative study, properly carried out, provides importantinsights. But we study each music in its own terms, and we try to learn to seeit as its own society understands it. Our area of concentration is music thatis accepted by an entire society as its own, and we reserve a lesser role for thepersonal, the idiosyncratic, the exceptional, differing in this way from histo­rians of music. We are most interested in what is typical of a culture.

3. Principally, ethnomusicology is study with the use offieldwork. We believethat fieldwork, direct confrontation with musical creation and performance,with the people who conceive of, produce, and consume music, is essential,and we prefer concentration on intensive work with small numbers of indi­vidual informants to surveys of large populations. And we hope that this as­sociation will lead to some kind ofbenefit for the people from whom we learn.

4. Ethnomusicology is the study ofall ofthe musical manifestations ofa soci­ety. Although we take into account a society's own hierarchy ofits various kindsof music, and its musicians, we want to study not only what is excellent butalso what is ordinary and even barely acceptable. We do not privilege eliterepertories, and we pay special attention to the musics oflower socio-economicclasses, colonized peoples, oppressed minorities. We believe that we must inthe end study all of the world's music, from all peoples and nations, classes,sources, periods of history. We just haven't yet got around to all of it.

These four areas of belief (though not in this order) are the basis of myorganization of these essays, and they function here as both definition andfundamental understandings ofwhat we do. Are they a kind of credo? Manyof my colleagues, typical nonconformists among musicians and music schol­ars, are unlikely to accept any doctrine. And there are also some other, per­haps more fundamental beliefs that define the core of ethnomusicologicalthinking and should somehow be appended to a credo.

Ethnomusicologists seem to be driven by two major but apparently con­flicting motivations. They search for universals, hoping to generalize intelli-

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14 tHE MUSICS OF THE WORLD

gently about the way in which the world)s cultures construct) use) conceive ofmusic. They try to understand human music in the context ofhuman cultureas a unitary phenomenon. And yet they never cease to marvel at the incredi­ble variety ofmanifestations of music. They delight in imparting to the worldthe strange facts uncovered by musical ethnography and analysis: that amongthe Sirion6 of Bolivia) each person may at one time have sung only one tuneall of his or her life, identifying the individual with a personal musical stamp(Key 1963; Stumpf1886: 411); that in the classical music of India there is an al­most incredibly complex interaction of melody and rhythm maintained overa sustained period by a musician who manipulates the rhythmic cycle in jux­taposition to improvised rhythmic units; that oppressed minorities have spe­cial uses for music in their struggles for improvement. Despite their interest inhuman universals) ethnomusicologists revel in their knowledge that most gen­eralizations about structure and use of music can be overturned by referenceto this or that small society. Theyvacillate between a view ofmusic as a unifiedhuman phenomenon and as an emblem of the infinite variety of human cul­tures.

Fundamentally) ethnomusicologists are egalitarians. They become attachedto cultures which they study and with which they identify themselves) they havespecial loves, obligations toward the musics they regard as ethnic or family her­itage. They may consciously or tacitly believe in the intellectual, technical, aes­thetic, or artistic superiority ofcertain musics and be able to make a good casefor this belief, preferring the classical music of Europe or Asia because of itscomplexity, or the music of "simple)) folk because ofits presumably unspoilednature. But, at the bottom line, at some level of conceptualization, they re­gard all musics as equal. Each music, they believe, is equally an expression ofculture, and each culture and each music must be understood first and fore­most in its own terms. They consider all musics worthy of study, recognizingthat all, no matter how apparently simple, are in themselves inordinately com­plex phenomena. And they believe that all musics are capable of impartingmuch of imp~rtanceto the peoples to whom they belong, and to the world,and thus naturally also to the scholars who study them.

But there is also a sense in which ethnomusicologists are usually not rel­ativists. Taking a sympathetic view of the music of all peoples, they come tobelieve in the right of each society to determine its own way of life) and theyare likely to become dedicated to the improvement oflife for the people withwhose music they are concerned. They may be impelled to social and polit­ical activism in opposition to colonialism or neo-colonialism and in supportof minorities, and perhaps more typically, of a kind of musical activism

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DEFINING ETHNOMUSICOLOGY 15

which insists that the musics of the world's peoples must be protected, pre­served, taught, and the musicians treated fairly and with respect. Althoughthey may wish to study their subject dispassionately, they are in the end oftenunable to avoid the results of extended contact with humans and their worksin a foreign society. They try to bring an understanding of their musics totheir own society, believing that the teaching of their subject will in a smallway promote intercultural-maybe even international-understanding, thatit will combat ethnocentrism and build respect for the traditions of theworld's societies. Intellectually neutral in their quest for knowledge of mu­sical cultures, they nevertheless have a passion for showing that the music ofthe oppressed people of the world, of lower classes in rigidly stratified soci­eties' of isolated, indigenous, technically developing peoples, is somethinginnately interesting, something worthy of attention and respect-indeed,something truly magnificent. These attitudes are not a prerequisite of grad­uate study or a teaching position, not part of the definition of the field; andthey are surely also found among members of other professions. But thereare few ethnomusicologists who do not share them.