Ethnomusicologists shape their interactions with music by using a particular lens through which to view and understand the music. Once we decide that we just have to study everything there is to know about a particular genre, we quickly start encountering too much information. Using an issue related to music (like psychology, or gender, or spirituality) can help narrow our focus. Those issues can reveal so much about the music that they serve; they can also ground our studies in order to go beyond the notes and rhythms. Of course most of us study the elements of music in our particular genre of interest; not to do so would result in an incomplete study. But we also need a complementary focus, and that might include politics, or mythology, or language, or race, or dance. Are you paying attention yet? These issues are fundamental across the breadth of human experience and shape not just our belief systems but also our behaviors, musical and otherwise.

A very basic model for how we focus our work is this: a specific musical genre + an issue or lens + a location. Below you’ll find a dozen examples; your job here is to look through them, make the connections, and understand how each one could potentially work as a reasonable subject of study:

* salsa and race in Puerto Rico

* shamanic chant and the natural world in Siberia

* hip-hop and politics in Amman, Jordan

* trance music and spirituality in Bali, Indonesia

* rock’n’roll and the Welsh language in Cardiff, Wales

* dhrupad (vocal) music and caste in New Delhi, India

* noh (theater) music and masks in Kyoto, Japan

* jazz and the media in New Orleans, Louisiana

* panpiping and social relationships in Cuzco, Peru

* Algerian rai and migration issues in Paris, France

* carnaval drumming and gender issues in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

* Inupiaq singing and modernization in Barrow, Alaska

I have chosen these for your consideration because I want you see the diversity of exciting possibilities right here at the very beginning. Notice as well that you could take another art, like dance or theater or film or painting, and do the same thing: specific art form + an issue or lens + a location. Considering the above list only, you could work on dance and race in Puerto Rico, theater and politics in Amman, Algerian film and migration issues in Paris, or painting and spirituality in Bali. Theater and masks in South India, anyone? (Yes!) This switching back and forth between lists may seem like an unfocused potpourri from the outside, but these combinations serve the purpose of deepening our musical experiences and allowing us to get much more effectively inside the musical culture of a particular place. That way we can understand what we are listening to and enjoy it even more. One of the features of this paper is that the Notes to the chapter list excellent first-step sources for most of these issues, in case you are eager to explore them in greater depth.

Even though I haven’t done any work on jazz and the media in New Orleans (yet), the very idea is enticing. Besides, I like New Orleans very much. So let’s look at this situation for a minute. Besides jazz and the media, New Orleans is also rich in architecture and food and layers of groups from different strata (calling up notions of race, class, and gender). You have to understand local history to understand jazz in New Orleans, don’t you? For that matter, New Orleans jazz culture begs to be clarified further by adding information on composition and improvisation, social interaction, politics, teaching and learning, orality and literacy, regionalism, and on and on. Are you overwhelmed yet? I am. In fact, although I would jump on a plane tomorrow for the chance to study jazz in New Orleans, all the competing ideas might get in my way of just appreciating and deepening my understanding of the music and its cultural context. So where do we start? First, choose a kind of music that you love, and find out where it comes from. This is music that you, personally, find absolutely compelling. It doesn’t need to be a place far away; remoteness and exoticism doesn’t have to be a hallmark of ethnomusicology, because we are considering all the world’s music. And please let go of the idea, if only for a minute, that the music you choose has to meet the approval of your peer group. It’s okay; I’ll wait for you to decide.

Issues: Fine-Tuning Your Approach

Now you have chosen where you want to go and what musical genre you would like to study there. But how do you even begin to figure out how to get inside this music? Remember, if you are an ethnomusicologist you want to deepen your understanding by seeing it from both an insider and an outsider perspective. You start looking carefully at the issues, and see how they might help you to understand the music much more fully. Let’s take a look at a whole array of potential issues below; there are fifty of them listed, in fact, but that list doesn’t even cover every issue. In each paragraph, I want you to consider your chosen musical style, and how you might approach that style by looking at it with one of these issues in mind. Could you study the importance of improvisation in jazz in Cuba? How about the connection between patriotism and American country music in Nashville? Or the reliance on materials of the natural world in bamboo instrumental traditions in Thailand? Certainly you can; the answer is yes to all of these. What about your favorite music?

Considering each of these issues below could potentially lead to a “dog’s breakfast” of approaches: take whatever is at least minimally edible (in the case of a dog) or applicable (in the case of ethnomusicology) and slap it together with music. But rather than subject you to that, I would prefer for you to at least look at the issue and see its potential for understanding music at a level beyond notes and rhythms. In some cases, I have used a specific example of a musical genre (like improvisation in jazz); in other cases, you will read about much broader applicability of something to almost all musics (like regionalism or spirituality or colonialism). As a result, these issues and their explanations will not necessarily be consistent; of course, neither music nor musicians are consistent either.

In dividing these issues into groups, it should be relatively easy to see the ways that dance, theater, film, and visual art might be seen as related arts. Other clusters of issues have to do with belief systems, power issues, ways of understanding music, and countless other principles of organization. They are grouped here to help you understand their relationship with each other, and how a general interest in, for example, power dynamics might lead you, the ethnomusicologist, into explorations of patronage and money, copyright law, and labor issues. Conversely, if labor and working conditions fire up your excitement, then focusing your interest in labor through music could make a fascinating study. It would be like turning the tables and using music as the lens for understanding labor.

The deep and obvious connections between music (and, by extension, the arts) with each of these exciting issues engage the idea of interdisciplinarity. This term is commonly used by academics, but – like many academic terms – you might not find it in a dictionary; it’s not in mine. To be interdisciplinary means to join multiple approaches, with their competing insights and value systems, to understand a theme or problem at greater depth and broader scope. Ethnomusicologists have to study multiple topics as part of their normal work. Those topics (often studied in graduate school) might include language, religion, politics and history of the region under examination. Take a look at the issues that follow.

Issues of Identity

What are some of your own characteristics that identify you? If you were introducing yourself to someone by e-mail, without benefit of photographs, how would you describe yourself? Let’s imagine that you are not trolling the personal ads, but just presenting who you are. Would it occur to you to identify your race, class, gender, status, ethnicity, or nationality? Why or why not? The only identifying element that I consistently have to call out about myself is my gender, because of the annoying fact of having a man’s name. Otherwise, to describe myself as a white, middle class, female, professor, Euro-American mongrel, American citizen, etc. seems just plain bizarre and inappropriate. But that’s coming from inside of me. Outsiders to someone else’s life might see that person in terms of their identity markers first, before they come to know anything else about that person, and make snap judgments accordingly. The first time it came up in conversation that I was a university professor and the woman with whom I was talking moved two steps backward, away from me, was quite the learning experience for me. That this has happened a dozen times reveals to me that outsiders are ready to jump into judgments immediately, based on what they perceive to be your identity and everything that comes with that identity.

Race, together with all of its local, culture-specific implications, is fundamental to our reception of, and attraction toward, certain kinds of music. As in the real lives of real people, musical sounds can be promoted, shunted aside, or silenced because of particular beliefs and actions of both the powerful and the powerless. While the repetitive temptation in the United States is to see race exclusively in terms of black and white, to do so renders it just as ineffective and inappropriate a lens as understanding the rest of the world in terms of either/or, for us/against us, and black/white. It simply doesn’t work. The Irish who came to America in the 19^th century were socially classified as “black,” regardless of their skin color. What does that tell you about race? It is not only flexible over time and from place to place, but it is quite powerful and political. As a social construct, race can determine both social and musical interaction all over the world, whether we refer to the Chinese musicians in Indonesia, Indian musicians in Tahiti, or Chicano musical identity across borders.[i] Whether we like it or not, race is an aspect of our collective listening and performing experience.

Class – as a lens through which to view music and musicians – is an issue easily grasped by those who have relatively clear ideas about the roles of folk, popular, and classical musics in the United States. A rather blunt and often incorrect assessment is that American folk music is by and for lower-class white people, pop music is by and for disaffected teens from the lower and middle classes, and classical music is for the upper classes. However, such an assessment is never that simple. Though this is sometimes the case, class is not always equated with how much money or material possessions one owns. More often, class has to do with perceived social or financial status in relation to others; in other words, what others see you as or how you see yourself in relation to others. Musicians themselves are drawn from all classes, as are their respective audiences. In some areas of the world, being a member of the wrong class in society can prevent you from even touching an instrument or singing a particular song genre. Suffice it (for now) to say that class limitations can have just as strong control over who performs what style of music as does race (above) and gender (below).

Gender is often used in academic writings to refer to differences between the sexes in social or cultural terms, not biological ones. In the context of ethnomusicology, the study of gender requires an understanding of what musical behaviors are expected of men, women, and those who fit culturally into a third category, which differs from place to place.[ii] This study extends beyond what women can do and what men can’t do, though; it is more about how the lens of gender can serve to enhance our understanding of musical genres, concepts about music and the musicians who play it, and even how we listen to music. Have you ever heard the keyboard described as a “girly” instrument in the context of a rock band? I have, plenty of times, and I don’t even play in a rock band. Consider also, however, a genre in which the effective performance of a certain musical genre can take place only when the (female) instrument is considered to be in relationship to the (male) performer. Some instruments and vocal styles are restricted to a single gender; some lyrics may be sung by only one gender. What does this say about societies and about their musical culture? As ethnomusicologists come in all genders, and publish on the subject frequently, it is clear that we continue to be fascinated by it.

Status examines the position that musicians hold in a particular society, and how they are expected to behave in accordance with that position. It is common in many parts of American society to think of musicians (especially instrumentalists) as having a particular status and set of behaviors that can differ (sometimes, rather strongly) from that of people who hold “normal” jobs. Two of those behaviors in connection with the status of being a musician might include erratic sleeping and waking patterns, and holding down multiple part-time jobs (as teachers, performers, recording artists, composers, etc.). In some societies musicians are believed to behave in ways that run contrary to what is normal, while in other societies, a musician must be descended from a noble family to perform a particular genre. Notice that in North America singers are usually not considered musicians at all! No matter how skilled, or how professional, a singer might be, he or she will never be accorded the status of musician. Any ideas of why that might be the case?

Nationalism, Regionalism and Ethnicity focus attention on identifying markers for a particular place, region, or nation. A Texan might tell you that he or she is a Texan first, and an American second. That statement is attributed to Texans not only by themselves, but also by non-Texans who believe they know all there is to know about Texans, even though they themselves are outsiders. In musical terms, musicians in particular are often adept at linking a particular musical sound to a region. In the United States, experienced musicians will instantly spot a “Mississippi sound” or a “Nashville sound” or a “New Orleans sound” based on a combination of aural cues. These cues range from the instruments (is the a fiddle playing a “shuffle” pattern?) to the form being played (is it a blues progression?) to the timbre of a singer’s voice (is it sung with a heavy vibrato without any “vocal grain”?).

For the genres performed in multiple national contexts, like reggae, hip-hop, rock, Western European opera or classical instrumental traditions, sometimes the only thing that distinguishes the nation or region is the language of singing. With opera, even that clue disappears because opera is generally sung in the language in which it was written (Italian, English, French, whatever). For my classes I like to play examples of Hjálmar, the Icelandic reggae band, and Llwybr Llaethog, a Welsh hip-hop group that includes dub, reggae and punk in their sounds. The element that makes those Icelandic and Welsh, respectively, is the use of the Icelandic and Welsh languages. Otherwise, they sound entirely like reggae and hip-hop.

Patriotism can shine an interesting light on musical production. When countries choose their national anthems, or songs or instrumental sounds that signify nationhood to them (and to others), they have to choose particular elements over others. The American national anthem is challenging to sing, and it is quite symbolic depending on where you live, whether you like baseball, and whether you are an American or not. Some places in the world have a national instrument either officially or in popular sentiment, like the harp in Ireland, the cuatro and its variants in Colombia, the koto in Japan, the dijeridu in Australia, the steel drums in Trinidad/Tobago, and the mbira in Zimbabwe. These national instruments and the music that local musicians produce on them can generate very powerful feelings of belonging to a place; however, almost any kind of music can do this to a person, and that generation of feeling is sometimes quite subjective. Is there a particular musical instrument or song that generates feelings of patriotism in you, whether you like it or not? It doesn’t have to be a national anthem. Hearing “We Shall Overcome” in a busy shop in West Java brought feelings of deep connection to my American identity – with its chaotic and continuing confrontations with civil rights issues – washing over me. What about you?

Heredity is something that obsesses many North Americans. “What are you?” is a phrase commonly exchanged among high school students, as well as being an implied phrase when people gather at heritage events (like the various Milwaukee ethnic festivals held in the summer – Festa Italiana, German Fest, African World Festival, Arab World Fest, Irish Fest, Mexican Fiesta, etc. And that’s just Milwaukee!). As both Canada and the United States are nations with majority immigrant populations, people whose families came from somewhere else may have the impulse to listen to music from that “somewhere else” place. So people who have never been to their ancestral homeland – wherever it may be – may nonetheless identify with the sounds that come from there. In contrast, they may strongly reject the music of their heritage if they wish to assimilate completely into North American culture. All identity issues are somewhat messy, which is one of the things that make them so interesting to ethnomusicologists.

Issues of Performance Practice

Musicians perform music in front of audiences, they jam with other musicians, they practice, they study, they teach, and they listen. Some musicians sing solo or in choruses or small ensembles; others play instrumental music solo or in ensembles. Every possible permutation of group or solo performance practice can be found in the world. Now consider – just in North American culture – how many ways a single singer can be accompanied. Just one singer can perform with bluegrass, old-timey, blues, rock, jazz, punk, metal, chamber ensemble, orchestra, electronic or other ensemble, as a soloist in a choir, and that doesn’t even get into all the possible ensembles linked by language and ethnicity and heritage (Japanese, Czech, Nigerian, Brazilian, Indian…and that’s all still in North America). So in performance practice, considering all kinds of possibilities and being open to what you might hear can reveal to you what your own expectations are. You might even allow your expectations to change, especially if you have ever listened to a live performance and thought, “That’s not music.”

The natural world can offer surprising connections to music and musicians. In some regions of Southeast Asia, for example, bamboo is a common and sustainable material used in the creation of musical instruments (as well as houses, scaffolding for skyscrapers, agricultural irrigation tools, and other structural elements). Bamboo can be struck, rattled, blown through, and used in many sound-producing ways that vary from one region to another. Without that bamboo as a material, the music of Southeast Asia would sound radically different. In parts of the Middle East, the reed flute has a long history and its players have elevated performance to a high art. In the region of Tuva (in Inner Asia), “solo” singers perform a type of music (borbannadir) in connection with rivers. In other words, to an outsider that person might be singing alone, but to an insider the singer has joined the river in producing music.[iii] In the Kaluli rainforest of Papua New Guinea, a singer joins in the rich soundscape of the forest and its creatures, including the birds, the water, and the trees.[iv]

Behavior is about understanding exactly how musicians perform. How is sound produced by humans, on either a particular instrument or through the mouth and vocal cords? What is different about the singing of a blues musician in Chicago and the singing of a Christian monk in southern Germany, besides the lyrics? The answer is “plenty”! Among other elements distinguishing those two sound types, re-consider the role of timbre.” Musicians behave in very specific ways according to local musical customs. How do you obtain correct pitch? What happens if you sit differently, or use a different hand position from other musicians? An instrument can have all kinds of sound-producing behaviors done with it, whether it be blown, struck, bowed, rattled, hummed into, or many other behaviors. In each case, a particular sound (or lack of sound) results from human behavior. If you have ever picked up an unfamiliar instrument and wondered “Whoa! How do you play this thing?” you are asking a question about musical behavior.[v]

Composition falls within flexible boundaries for musicians and composers. In many cases, a composer creates something in writing that can be followed in precise detail by musicians. In many other cases, a composer comes up with a structure that is filled in by musicians. The ethnomusicological concept of composition is much broader than that with which classical musicians and audience members are familiar. Take bluegrass, for example: if a bluegrass singer writes a song and presents it to her band, they figure out the accompaniment of the song (usually within minutes). It is nonetheless her song, although each instrumentalist figured out individual accompaniment based on pre-existing patterns. In Bali, an entire group of musicians might work out a new composition (called kreasi baru, “new creation”) by playing different options of parts, rehearsing the piece for weeks, and presenting it at a competition. Individuals might develop specific parts, but who is the “composer”? In a Balinese context, it is often considered the leader of the ensemble. Try to think of composition as occurring along a continuum from very basic to very complex, with or without notation (and usually without).

Improvisation is not the opposite of composition. Instead, both are part of a larger continuum. In North Indian classical music, a solo sitar player improvises musical passages based on very specific models, including the raga (see the section on India) but relying on his or her own artistic capabilities, mood, and inspiration. For soloists everywhere, the concept of working within a framework while adding essential elements of individual musicianship is key to successful improvisation. However, differences exist depending upon where one plays music. In a public performance by a jazz ensemble, audience members look forward to improvised moments based on familiar structures, including “standards” or songs derived from musical theater as well as newer compositions.[vi] When a jazz ensemble plays without an audience, however, improvised musical passages can extend much further as the musicians are freed from performing in front of an audience with certain expectations. In some areas of the world the soloist relies on audience feedback and encouragement, while in other areas the audience just might be ignored entirely. Just as in composition, improvisation does not necessarily mean the same thing everywhere.

Technology has an impact on performance practice because in some cases, it is impossible to hear the performance without them. When the Beatles stopped performing live in 1966 and became a studio band, they were able to use technology more effectively to their advantage. Of course their albums continued to sell, but what they had achieved in the studio could not be achieved in live performance. Studio practices are not the only connection between music and technology, however. Take a look at a piano; it is a masterpiece of technology! Guitars, silver flutes, accordions…these can be played acoustically with great sophistication, and the technology had to be developed for them to function effectively. Computers and electronic equipment are often used to facilitate live performance, as are amplifying and playback devices. Contemporary composition often draws from the use of technology. Most urban areas of the world now use sophisticated means to enhance musical performance, and in some areas, performances could not take place without technological assistance.

Issues of Power and Control

Power has to do with the differentiation of influence in one direction or another. Consider the way that the United States focuses its power on its borders. Within the United States, few overt displays of political power take place, but the border is extremely important. In some areas of the world (Southeast Asia, for one area) all the power might be focused on the person in charge of the nation or region, while the border is irrelevant. Power, in that case, radiates outward from a central focus. In musical behaviors, certain musicians, or the instruments they play or parts they sing, are powerful in relation to other musicians, instruments or parts. In some West African drumming ensembles, power and charisma radiate outward from the lead drummer, whose power engages the other musicians. In Indonesia, the large hanging gong (which plays the least frequently) is much more powerful and important than the smallest bronze metallophone, which plays more than any other instrument in the ensemble. Soprano singers always seem to get the best parts in choral music, and always at the expense of the altos (I’m speaking as an alto here).

Politics is a theme often covered in vocal music; although political themes are harder to spot instantly in instrumental music, vocal music is a worldwide vehicle for both social justice and political oppression. A key element of the connection between music and politics is that politicians tend to recognize the power of music in joining people together. As a result, banning or forbidding the performance of particular songs, genres, or musical instruments can have extraordinary results. In 1603 Queen Elizabeth I issued the proclamation “Hang all harpers where found, and burn the instruments.” Her armies did so, and the devastating result was that only two harps survived along with just a few harpers. The harp later became the national instrument. In North Africa (particularly Morocco and Algeria), the performance of the popular dance genre called rai has led to its banning and the imprisonment of its musicians for their songs about social justice and their attempts to modernize traditional culture.[vii] The United States has plenty of examples of political songs, from folk to country, rock, punk, and classical musics. Can you think of a political song dealing with an issue of social justice in any genre?

Patronage has to do with how musical performance is supported (financially or otherwise), and how that support takes place. In Europe for hundreds of years, it was common for the Catholic Church to support musicians and composers in the creation of new music to honor God. Not only in Europe but also in East Asia (China, Japan, and Korea), musicians and dancers would perform for the courts of the nobility. Until the 19^th century in Europe, these musicians were treated as servants. After the appearance of Beethoven (coupled with some significant political and social changes) the “star system” which characterizes the lives of famous rock musicians developed, and some musicians began to be treated almost as gods themselves.[viii] In West Africa, the griot or traditional praise singer (who also functions as a storyteller and historian) performs for patrons, who might support the griot with food, money, a place to live, health care, and places to perform. Being connected to a patron is part of the web of social networks in much of West African music, as well as in many other musical networks of the world.

Labor issues come up all over the world in regard to music. Sometimes musicians are expected to perform for free, or to perform under difficult working conditions. A freelance musician in North America might be hired to play at a wedding/reception for $200, but then have to cope with plans changing as the reception is delayed for two or more hours, or promises of a meal never materialize, or reimbursement for transportation never occurs. In North America the American Federation of Musicians[ix] exists in part to protect the rights of musicians, from the major stars to the piano bar guy working downtown somewhere. ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and BMI (Broadcast Music, Incorporated) are responsible for collecting licensing fees from public performances, and giving those fees to (member) composers in the form of royalties.[x] The 20^th century in North America featured years of “music wars” in which the major broadcasting companies and radio stations fought with the people in charge of bands and orchestras. Almost everywhere in the world, people involved in the music business generally have to negotiate labor issues constantly, and the musicians are often at the bottom of the heap.

Copyright and Ownership should immediately call to your attention the issue of people downloading songs that were created, performed, and recorded by working musicians, and the enormous changes in the recording industry that have occurred as a result of the capability to download musical materials for free. Thousands of musicians have been thrown out of work, and many have ceased being able to make a living from music at all. Yet the issue of copyright and the ownership of music is widespread. In many areas of the world, including Native America, a song can be “owned” by the members of a single family. In other areas, a musical product or instrument or genre is believed to belong to the people who produce it. One copyright case concerns the unlawful use of recorded tracks of two aboriginal Taiwanese singers, Kuo Ying-nan and Kuo Shin-chu; the group Enigma used their voices on a song titled “Return to Innocence” without paying or acknowledging the singers. It is the responsibility of ethnomusicologists to act ethically in all cases; the unpaid, unauthorized use of anyone’s musical materials, regardless of one’s intentions, is inappropriate.

Issues of Belief

Beliefs have to do with how local people (both musicians and non-musicians) conceptualize music and musicians, how spirituality and music are connected, and how related issues (mythology, ritual, healing, etc.) can shape or be shaped by musical performance. A quick scan of online resources reveals seemingly endless book titles focusing specifically on music and religion, or music and ritual. However, “music and belief” can concern philosophy as well. Followers of Confucius point to the importance of the natural world, and believe that harmony in the universe is created through the combination of eight different materials: wood, leather, stone, clay, silk, metal, bamboo, and dried gourd. These eight elements of nature are then represented in the overall sound created by the combination of eight different musical instruments: wood blocks, drums with leather heads, stone chimes, ocarinas, stringed instruments, bells or gongs, flutes, and mouth organs, respectively.[xi] This is just one philosophical idea out of thousands! The very broad category of belief, then, requires us to narrow our search in order to zero in on exactly what it is we need to know.

Spirituality in the large sense – not just mainstream religion but belief about the sacred – tends to cover a variety of beliefs and practices. The English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, which means “breath.” This shows up in mainstream religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and others) in the use of chant, a kind of heightened speech. Chant is intimately tied to the breath, and the performance of chant is a type of meditation.[xii] Instruments that use air (organs, trumpets, reeds, and other wind instruments) are also tied to breath and breathing. Furthermore, belief systems around the world tend to (but not always) privilege the voice over the sound of musical instruments, as the voice – connected with breath and therefore with life – is believed to be closer to the divine. As a result of this implied connection of song with the divine, singers in many areas of the world (particularly urban areas) are often valued more highly than instrumentalists, paid more, and respected more. Women are often cast in the role of singer as a respectable musical role, while women becoming instrumentalists can be frowned upon, particular with religious music.

Mythology is often used among English speakers to characterize something that is believed to be untrue. Yet if you consider the term seriously, as academics do, a myth is a collective belief or a story. Myths can involve music, as in Orpheus, the Greek god of music, or Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, art, and music in Hindu and Buddhist cultures (known as Benzaiten in Japan). The Howler Monkey god in Mayan culture is connected to the arts and music, as is Thoth of ancient Egypt. In myths about these gods and goddesses, music can be an important aspect of the stories about how societies become civilized. Foundational myths can also provide exciting insights into the role of music in society; for example, many Southeast Asian societies have myths in which boats carry the spirits of the deceased to the other world. The fact that boat-shaped stringed instruments are a part of Southeast Asian music ties in with this myth, as the sound can “carry” listeners to connect them with ancestors.[xiii]

Ritual and music are closely related, as music often plays an important role during the course of a ritual. Rituals can feature music that is specific to a particular event: birth, death, coming-of-age, weddings, graduations, dedications of buildings, coronations, communicating with the spirit world, healing, and other events. When music is a part of ritual, it offers a kind of temporal guide to the progression of the ritual. For example, someone “in the know” can tell how long a ritual might last, based on familiarity with the music being played during the ritual. Because ritual is used for multiple purposes, it crosses boundaries with other issues (symbolism, healing, liminality, mythology, and spirituality among others). Many ethnomusicologists have ritual as their focus because of the centrality of music to ritual.[xiv] Ritual can sometimes function as an enactment of an earlier myth, but it can also function as a way for members of a society to connect with each other. Some music associated with ritual is closely guarded and is not intended to be performed publicly; other ritual music can cross over into secular practice.

Liminality is the in-between place; it can refer to places (crossroads, shores, wells), people (immigrants, biracial people, adolescents), or times (twilight, dawn, seasonal changes, equinoxes). In terms of music, consider the music of immigrants (who are neither “of here” nor “of home” once they’ve left). It is also the music of fusion of different styles, as in the rock collaborations by Peter Gabriel, Sting, and Paul Simon with some of the world’s great musicians, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Urubamba, Youssou N’Dour, and others. The blues musician Robert Johnson was alleged to have sold his soul to the devil, who he met at a crossroads at twilight, in order to enhance his playing skills.[xv] The song “Auld Lang Syne” is sung or played not only in the United States on New Year’s Eve, but also every single night in Japan as the subway system shuts down at midnight. While the liminality of New Year’s Eve in North America is obvious (the singers of “Auld Lang Syne” are between the old year and the new), midnight in a Japanese subway station is also a liminal time in that everyone breaks into a full-out run as they try to catch that last subway going home; it is right between “subway still open” and “subway firmly closed down until 5 a.m.” for the hapless riders.

Symbolism engages aspects of our subconscious to help us focus attention on important symbols that trigger memories, associations, and clues to understanding meaning. This field is called semiotics (the study of symbols and their “referents” or what the symbols refer to), and it receives considerable attention from ethnomusicologists as they try to come to grips with musical meaning, or what people in the societies we study are feeling and understanding when they experience music.[xvi] Symbols are – in general – socially constructed, so that what you perceive to be symbolic (of, for example, the sound of spring in Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”) could be completely lost on someone with a differently-developed social construction of musical meaning. What does the sound of church bells signify for you? How about a drumming ensemble with 30 players? Each musical genre (and sound) comes with its own culturally-embedded symbols.

Healing belongs to the field of music therapy, in which people use music or sound to speed the healing process. While music is not necessarily expected to offer a cure for a given illness, its healing properties and its ability to boost the immune system are well-documented in many countries. [xvii] Healing is often connected to ritual, to spirituality, to culturally-bound beliefs, and to how the mind works in helping the body to heal. Formal music therapy associations exist in many countries, and one can get an academic degree specializing in music therapy. However, the use of music in healing can also be very localized, personal, and community-determined, depending on where you live in the world, the size of your community, the presence or absence of music specialists, and other factors.

Local Theory refers to what musicians and others believe and say about how the music is organized; how they understand what they play or sing forms a part of your work. Another word for this is epistemology, which you could roughly translate as “local ways of knowing.” In this case, it’s not opinion; it’s knowledge, based on years of work in whatever local genre of music the person is working within. Sometimes your understanding of a musical genre will differ from that of the master musician with whom you work. How do you reconcile these differences? That negotiation of knowledge is a key issue that fieldworkers encounter not only in the field, but later, as they come to grips with their own necessarily biased ways of understanding the music. Even when you, the ethnomusicologist, are a member of the local group, sometimes being an academic is enough to force outsider status on you. You can choose which aspects of local theory to absorb and incorporate, and what aspects of your own training in musical analysis (which you will have received in graduate school) are applicable in your particular context. Your job, then, is to make sense of both the details and the larger picture.[xviii]

There are plenty of other issues that you could explore in connection to music. Furthermore, each one could (and often does) take up multiple books in their relevance to our collective work as ethnomusicologists. These include teaching and learning, courtship, orality and literacy, cross-cultural fusion, migration, the use of notation (or not), acculturation, the function of music in society, urbanization, sexuality, neuroscience, the body, musical analysis (focusing primarily on the elements of music as opposed to people playing music), social interaction, colonialism, post-colonialism, and many, many others. As I mentioned in the beginning, one can take any art form – including music – and connect it to an issue. Dance, theater, film, literature, costuming, masks, and visual arts of various kinds (painting, architecture, sculpture, etc.) can each be combined with (for example) neuroscience, behaviors, nationalism, symbolism, technology, and most of these other issues as well. Professionals can base making their living on trying to understand and apply how these issues work hand-in-hand with all the art forms.

Do you see the great potential of these approaches to understanding music? Perhaps the most difficult part is this: which one(s) to choose? While it is normal to stick with just one issue or approach for an article or a term paper, when ethnomusicologists are writing books they tend to combine different approaches. When I first returned home to Seattle after doing fieldwork in Indonesia, I pondered what my main issues ought to be and how to make sense of my experiences. It became clear to me that the music I had studied (a semi-rural aristocratic genre of sung poetry) had been shifted into the urban milieu after Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands in 1945, and that I ought to focus on urbanization. The political dimension was there as well: the shift came about as a result of political change. Colonialism and patronage played a role, as Dutch sponsorship of musicians was an aspect of pre-independence Indonesia. Traditional spiritualities was important too, because the music served as a bridge not just from the urban to the rural and from the present to the past, but also from the mundane (wordly) to the sacred. In short, contemporary urbanites were connecting – through music – with ancestral tiger spirits in the forests of the past. If I had been writing an article, I might have chosen just one approach; in order to write a doctoral dissertation, I had to use several.

Let’s take a look now at how this approach shows up in actual published works. In a recent issue – volume 54, number 1 – of the academic journal Ethnomusicology (quite possibly available in your campus library!) the ethnomusicologist Sonja Downing wrote an article titled “Agency, Leadership, and Gender Negotiation in Balinese Girls’ Gamelans” (pp. 54-80). Gamelan is a type of Indonesian bronze ensemble featuring – among other instruments – metal xylophones and hanging gongs. Just looking at Sonja’s title will tell you that gender is one of the issues she examines. Another ethnomusicologist, Peter Manuel, has an article in the same issue titled “Composition, Authorship, and Ownership in Flamenco, Past and Present” (pp.106-135.). Peter covers three important issues in this article; the genre is flamenco (which features guitar, singing, clapping, and dancing) and the location is Spain. So you see, just looking at a handful of articles will tell you that many professional ethnomusicologists bring these three elements (music, an issue, and a location) into their work.

When it comes to full-sized books, we do much the same thing. I am looking at my own bookshelf at this instant, and I see titles like Music, Postcolonialism, and Gender (Davis 2006), about identity and gender in Irish music; Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe (Turino 2000), about popular music and nationalism in Zimbabwe; and Sacred Sound: Experiencing Music in World Religions (Beck 2006) about music and religion in multiple areas. Hundreds of books follow this model, and it is quite common for books in ethnomusicology to include a CD or a DVD so that you do not have to rely on the author’s word for how interesting the music is. When you do a study of this kind, you come to understand much more about the issues in addition to the music. If you’re interested in neuroscience, for example, you end up reading works in fields outside of music to see how the things you learn about neuroscience can be applied to what you’re learning about a particular musical genre.

Questions for seminar:

Which of these issues applies to the music that you would like to study? Take three radically different issues from the above list, apply it to the music that you’re interested in, and bring your preliminary ideas to seminar tomorrow morning. How would exploring “your” music (the genre you’re studying for your final project) be better informed, or clearer, or more easily accomplished, by applying an issue to that genre? Why did you choose these three?