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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $13.50

Format:
Paperback
160 pp.
10 b/w illustrations, 4.375" x 6.875"

ISBN-13:
9780199794379

Publication date:
January 2014

Imprint: OUP US


Ethnomusicology

A Very Short Introduction

Timothy Rice

Series : Very Short Introductions

Ethnomusicology, an academic discipline founded in 1950, has been defined as the study of the music of others. This definition, at once whimsical and very nearly true, is incomplete. Many of its strongest threads have emerged because a person or a people have wanted to understand themselves, their history, and their identity. This Very Short Introduction examines the history of the impulses to study ourselves and others, beginning with the work of Jesuit missionaries to Latin America in the sixteenth century and continuing through the encyclopedists, antiquarians, and orientalists of the eighteenth century, and the nationalists, scientists, and humanists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The institutional motivations driving studies in this field are scholarly and intellectual, political and ideological, artistic and aesthetic, religious, ethical, or commercial.

What have ethnomusicologists learned about the nature of music? For ethnomusicologists, music creates community when performed; it embodies and in some cases creates cultural values and social norms; it constructs individual identities; it expresses large-scale economic and political structures that press upon particular local communities. Ethnomusicologists generally believe that music is an aspect of culture coherent with, or contributing to, any number of ideas and practices in such fields as religion, ethics, cosmology, plastic arts, dance, cooking, social identity, and the definition of the self. This book looks cross-culturally at some of the many themes that demonstrate the way music is embedded in, reflects, and contributes to broader cultural patterns, themes such as culturally specific beliefs about the nature of music; the social status of musicians; music and emotion; music's role in religion and ritual; the economics of music; music and the construction of individual and social identity, including gender and sexuality; and music in societies under stress from war, violence, conflict, or disease.

In this Very Short Introduction, Timothy Rice describes how ethnomusicologists conduct fieldwork, examining some of the most spectacular results of these research methods as well as some of the issues that have arisen from using them, including ethical questions, questions of representation (who can speak for whom and how), what we learn when we learn to play music, the accuracy and reliability of musical notation and sound recordings, and differences between "insider" knowledge and scholarly interpretations.

About the Series:

Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects - from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative - yet always balanced and complete - discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

Readership : Suitable for scholars and students interested in ethnomusicology, musicology, world music, anthropology.

List of illustrations
1. Defining ethnomusicology
2. A bit of history
3. Conducting research
4. The nature of music
5. Music and culture
6. Individual musicians
7. Writing music history
8. Ethnomusicology in the modern world
9. Ethnomusicologists at work
References
Further reading
Suggestions for listening

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Timothy Rice isProfessor of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles and the editor of Ethnomusicology (1981-84). He is the director of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

Shadows in the Field - Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley
The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology - Edited by Benjamin Koen, Jacqueline Lloyd, Gregory Barz and Edited by Karen Brummel-Smith
Community Music - Lee Higgins
World Music: A Very Short Introduction - Philip V. Bohlman

Special Features

  • Includes a brief history of the attempt to understand the deep cosmological, social, and psychological significance of music.
  • Considers how ethnomusicologists are dealing with the role of music in a modern world of war, violence, disease, and climate change and on ethnomusicologists' role in academia and public service.
  • Examines how music is embedded in society and culture, how individuals create and experience music, and how and why music, even so-called traditional music, constantly changes.
  • Part of the bestselling Very Short Introduction series - over six million copies sold worldwide.