With my groundings strongly placed within the framework of anthropology and art, there exists an obvious slant towards material culture when it comes to my academic interests. However, ethnomusicology has always played a large role within my development as a critical thinker. My artistic practice had always incorporated and/or taken flight through the medium of sound and music.
Alan P. Merriam, the author of the "Anthropology of Music", simply states that the study of ethnomusicology can be divided into two aspects: the anthropological and the musicological (Merriam 1964). He believes that the ideal model of study would fuse these two approaches: musicological approaches tend to treat music as an object in and of itself “without reference to the cultural matrix out of which it is produced" (vii), and "to provide a theoretical frameworks for the study of music as human behaviour; and to clarify the kinds of processes which derive from the anthropological, contribute to the musicological, and increase our knowledge of both conceived within the broad rubric of behavioural studies”(viii) Thus, like every branch of anthropology, it would come as no surprise that ethnomusicology adopts “... aspects of the social sciences and aspects of the humanities in such a way that each compliments the other and leads to a fuller understanding of both. Neither should be considered as an end in itself; the two must be joined into a wider understanding” (7).
This hybridised disposition that the discipline adopts, provides much excitement within the study of music and cultures insofar as the ethnographic and theoretical aspects are specific to the ethnomusicologist and his or her processes as artist and researcher. Thus, it will be fascinating to see how I could extrapolate my research by collecting ethnographic data from both oral and visual cultures without any preconceived notions of what such an approach would generate.
Alan P. Merriam, the author of the "Anthropology of Music", simply states that the study of ethnomusicology can be divided into two aspects: the anthropological and the musicological (Merriam 1964). He believes that the ideal model of study would fuse these two approaches: musicological approaches tend to treat music as an object in and of itself “without reference to the cultural matrix out of which it is produced" (vii), and "to provide a theoretical frameworks for the study of music as human behaviour; and to clarify the kinds of processes which derive from the anthropological, contribute to the musicological, and increase our knowledge of both conceived within the broad rubric of behavioural studies”(viii) Thus, like every branch of anthropology, it would come as no surprise that ethnomusicology adopts “... aspects of the social sciences and aspects of the humanities in such a way that each compliments the other and leads to a fuller understanding of both. Neither should be considered as an end in itself; the two must be joined into a wider understanding” (7).
This hybridised disposition that the discipline adopts, provides much excitement within the study of music and cultures insofar as the ethnographic and theoretical aspects are specific to the ethnomusicologist and his or her processes as artist and researcher. Thus, it will be fascinating to see how I could extrapolate my research by collecting ethnographic data from both oral and visual cultures without any preconceived notions of what such an approach would generate.