ethnomusicology

Two approaches to ethnomusicological studies are common: the anthropological and the musicological. Ethnomusicologists using the anthropological approach generally study music to learn about people and culture. Those who practice the musicological approach study people and cultures to learn about music.

Ethnomusicology – The study of music in different cultures, ethnomusicology explores the relationship between music and society. Folk Music – Music of oral tradition or evoking the style of oral-tradition music, often associated with a specific nationality or political movement.

Key Theories/Concepts Ethnomusicology takes as given the notion that music can provide meaningful insight into a larger culture or group of people. Another foundational concept is cultural relativism and the idea that no culture/music is inherently more valuable or better than another.

Ethnomusicology aims at understanding not only what music is but why it is, what it means, and how it reflects, references, and inflects our human condition as people and as social beings. It is, in short, the study of music as aesthetic practice and social power.

Although ethnomusicology was historically thought of as the study of folk music, modern researchers have recognized that most cultures have three main classes of music: folk music, art music, and popular music. Today, ethnomusicology has expanded to include the study of all three types of music.

While the traditional subject of musicology has been the history and literature of Western art music, ethnomusicology was developed as the study of all music as a human social and cultural phenomenon.

The scope of musicology may be summarized as covering the study of the history and phenomena of music, including (1) form and notation, (2) the lives of composers and performers, (3) the development of musical instruments, (4) music theory (harmony, melody, rhythm, modes, scales, etc.), and (5) aesthetics, acoustics, ...

Although ethnomusicology was historically thought of as the study of folk music, modern researchers have recognized that most cultures have three main classes of music: folk music, art music, and popular music. Today, ethnomusicology has expanded to include the study of all three types of music.

During one lecture, he talked about preparing a halftime performance for a football game and said, “Every performance must abide by the rule of the three C's.” He went on to describe what these three C's represented in the thought process: continuity, contrast, and climax.

He won a National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1986. One of the world's best-regarded ethnomusicologists, Lomax was widely credited with preserving the musical heritage of the United States with his work. Alan Lomax was born on January 31, 1915, in Austin, Texas.

“Musicology today encompasses the study of all music in all times and places using all different methods.” However, the principle distinction between the terms is that musicology studies the development of music through time, while ethnomusicology looks at music in any given culture.

Among the field's abiding concerns are whether outsiders can validly study another culture's music and what the researcher's obligations are to his informants, teachers, and consultants in colonial and postcolonial contexts.