Ethnomusicology and Music Education: Intersecting Paths for Understanding Music, Education, and Culture
Ph.D. Examiner: “We have heard of ways in which music education specialists make use of the fruits of ethnomusicological research in their teaching. Is it just about ‘materials’, or is method a consideration? And what, if anything, do music educators have to offer ethnomusicology?”
Ph.D. Candidate: Silence, moderate panic, and a pleaful glance to the Ph.D. committee for assistance.
The conditions for border-crossings by music education practitioners and scholars into ethnomusicology have never been more favorable, and the frequency of such crossings has steadily increased over the past half-century. Workshops in world music and expansions of repertoire for established school ensembles now enter music education practice at unprecedented rates, fresh from journeys across disciplinary boundaries. Children's music classes today are as likely to feature a singing game from Korea as from Kentucky. In the United States, the pioneering work of the Lomaxes and the Seegers in bringing traditional music into public schools has been joined by music educator-collectors who divide their time between culture-bearers on reservations, in barrios, and other field sites, and classrooms where young people learn music from recordings and transcriptions.
A small cadre of music education scholars worldwide now employs ethnomusicological methods in pursuing questions relevant to music learning and instruction. The pathways across the music education border into ethnomusicology—and back again—are well established, opening the way for fresh understandings of music, teaching and learning, and research inquiry.
At the same time, ethnomusicologists have ventured into territory traditionally claimed by music education. Some have written practical articles for professional teaching magazines, while others have led workshops for teachers, helping them develop techniques and repertoire for classrooms and ensembles. A few ethnomusicologists have collaborated with music educators on instructional projects and curricular plans, and more rarely on research. Knowingly or not, some have been influenced by music educators in their teaching, scholarship, and community work. With or without collaboration or acknowledgment of music education scholarship, some ethnomusicologists have begun studying the very raison d’être of music education: the teaching and learning processes of master and aspiring musicians. As researchers have shifted their focus from the music alone to the music-makers, they have developed a participant-observation process that often turns scholars into beginning students of a musical system. By this very nature, they are drawn into questions of pedagogy, training, and educational systems. Border-crossings appear to be happening in both directions, and the cross-fertilization of these fields may be drawing them closer together.
The influences of ethnomusicological theory and method on scholarly and practical aspects of music education will be considered here, along with music education’s impact on ethnomusicologists’ scholarship and teaching. An examination of books, monographs, journal articles, instructional materials, and conference proceedings reveals ideas and practices of overlapping interest. The writings of John Blacking, Charles Keil, Bruno Nettl, Tim Rice, and the Seegers and the Lomaxes are among those scholars whose work is relevant to music education. Issues of mutual interest include cross-cultural perspectives on music cognition, the mind-body and music-dance dualities, children’s music culture, the pedagogy of world music, and research approaches to studying music, musical thought, and musical behavior. Beginning with definitions and a sketch of ethnomusicology as an evolving discipline, this discussion turns toward a review of ethnomusicologists’ roles in developing broader perspectives in university teacher-training programs and the schools where teachers work. An understanding of the dissemination of the concept of world music comes from describing some of the key players in the world music education movement over the second half of the twentieth century, including both scholars and practitioners. Ethnomusicological method is defined as a mode of inquiry blending musical and cultural perspectives, and its use by music educators drawn to its potential for addressing ongoing questions of music instruction is noted, as is its role in developing a literature in comparative music education.
Two caveats are worth noting: (1) my perspective is from the United States, so that the themes are informed by personal observations from nearly three decades of working at the intersection of education and ethnomusicology, and by my knowledge of literature in U.S.-styled ethnomusicology (as defined by the U.S.-based Society for Ethnomusicology) and U.S. school music and teacher education programs; and (2) I emphasize citing ethnomusicological literature primarily, assuming that readers of this journal are familiar with the practice and body of research in music education.
The culture of ethnomusicology
In retrospect, ethnomusicology may have begun forming as a result of the European "discovery" of the world in the late nineteenth century, which provided the means for considering the interrelationship of cultures politically, intellectually, and artistically, and for pursuing comparative musical study. Guido Adler may have anointed the field in 1885 with his discussion of musicology as a broad discipline encompassing many types of music research. Adler laid out two divisions of musical scholarship: historical and systematic musicology. The first includes what music historians do; the second includes theory, aesthetics, music pedagogy, and "Musikologie"—which Adler defined as the comparative study of music for ethnographic purposes. The term "ethno-musicology" was actually coined in 1950 for what had earlier been called, in both Europe and North America, "comparative musicology." Bruno Nettl’s historical reflections place ethnomusicology’s beginnings in the 1880s, due to the appearance by that time of intercultural studies in music, the study of music in culture, comparative organology, fieldwork techniques including recording technology, and attention to analytical problems. In his view, the emergence of ethnomusicology—or at least its roots—was necessary so that studies in musical history could graduate from score analysis and the assembly of chronologies to the more sophisticated and broadly encompassing discipline it is today.
Also underway in nineteenth-century Europe was the development of folk music collection and analysis. While folk music studies had known several centuries of activity, the growth of nationalism in the 1800s intensified efforts for musicians and folklorists to spread into the countryside in Germany, France, Italy, and elsewhere to seek out the music at the heart of a nation’s expressive self. Until at least 1910, Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók visited villages in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, setting up their wax cylinder apparatuses to capture the musical essence of the folk as an embodiment of local ways and beliefs. In Britain, Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles spearheaded a revival of folk music and dance in the opening decades of the century that continued with weight and energy through the 1950s and 1960s. Thus, as some Europeans looked to comparative musicology to study non-Western music and its relationship to familiar Western forms, others chose to stay close to home in their research of songs, dances, and instrumental traditions that would help define the national musical spirit. As the twentieth century unfolded, departments of music, anthropology, and folklore supported faculty and students’ interests in studying music in culture, as culture, and as a repertoire of musical expression valued by "folk," particularly in rural areas.
By the time ethnomusicology was officially founded with the establishment of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 1955 and its newsletter (which by 1958 had become the journal Ethnomusicology), two streams of scholars were interacting within the field and helping to shape its themes and methods. On one side, musicologists like Charles Seeger, a founding member of the Society, called attention to comparative analysis of music’s components across cultures. Coming from social and cultural anthropology were figures like Alan Merriam, David McAllester, and Richard Waterman, all of whom studied music as cultural behavior and who looked as much—or more—to the music’s performers, creators, and audiences as to the content of the music itself. These first-generation ethnomusicologists, students of or influenced by the legendary anthropologist Franz Boas and his own students Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, were the field’s leaders who saw music as an important factor for understanding culture. Their traditional training in anthropology removed from ethnomusicology any chance for scholars to settle into an armchair in a cozy den to transcribe and analyze musical patterns. Instead, anthropologically driven ethnomusicologists sent their own students into the field, where for a year or more they would experience as participants the music of their selected cultures. The dual nature of ethnomusicology remains alive today in monographs and journal articles, and some scholars convincingly allow their specialized study of a single musical culture to guide them in comparative analyses they make across cultures—or at least between their personal first culture and the musical culture of their selected research—in both the sonic features and the social processes of music.
For ethnomusicology to develop as a discipline of its own, it needed to take certain turns so that established university faculties in performance, historical musicology, music theory, and education would understand and find its relevance. Much of the early ethnomusicological fieldwork through the mid-twentieth century, emanating from university departments of anthropology and folklore, focused on musical cultures of Native American groups and tribal societies in Africa, with little attention to the high-art musical systems of Asia. With the growing recognition of ethnomusicology by music departments specializing in Western European art music, curiosity developed for exploring other systems of art music. In the 1960s and 1970s, as the academy opened its doors to ethnomusicology, a surge of interest developed for the musics of India, Japan, China, and Indonesia. The program at the University of California–Los Angeles, three times larger then than any other ethnomusicology program in North America (and still the largest), was influential in sending its graduates into music departments and schools where they could spread the word that "all the world’s musics" are worthy of study. Gamelans, many directed by UCLA graduates, began to appear in courtyards and rehearsal rooms and were supported for their ability to draw students directly into music-making experiences—since this was high-art music from Southeast Asia, it was all the better for adding the gamelan to classical music departments. There was also a stream of interest in African musics, based on multicultural considerations and the interest of American universities in particular in providing a response within their music units to the Afro-American studies programs unfolding through the influences of the Civil Rights era. Not until the 1980s, when issues of context began to seep even into scholarly studies of European historical musics, did faculties begin to open up to a more anthropological view of musical systems as expressions of culture. It was then that a fair balance of musics began to be achieved across ethnomusicology teaching faculties at American institutions, which deemed Native American, Latin American, urban, and even popular musics acceptable for curricular inclusion in courses for music majors and general studies students. As departments of music accepted these areas of specialization through new faculty hires, so too was the discipline of ethnomusicology expanded to encompass a broader array of cultures open for study.
World music for pre-service and practicing teachers
Members of university faculties in music education and composition were receptive early on to the possibilities of ethnomusicology and the development of world music ensembles, well ahead of their colleagues in music history, theory, and performance. Prompted by the realization of changing demographics in American society and globally, by the middle of the 1960s a handful of music educators were leading the way in linking to ethnomusicology and pointing out to colleagues the benefits of having these music-culture scholars on board to expand students’ perceptions of music and its makers. They recognized the significance of the philosophical stance that some societies held—for example, those in West Africa and the Pacific—regarding the pan-human capacity for music-making, and were drawn to this optimistic belief that all students could find a place in the music-making experience. They found the communal nature of some of the world’s ensembles relevant to the original premise of the common school’s educational equity: that "what is good for some is good for all." They found appealing the importance of collaborative social experiences in these ensembles and, as with traditional school bands, choirs, and orchestras, applauded the goal of teaming together for a united musical effort. As transportation and communication developments rapidly linked the world, leading music educators like William Anderson, Barbara Lundquist, Sally Monsour, Abraham Schwadron, and James Standifer, alongside ethnomusicologists like David McAllester and William P. Malm, began to assert the need for music education students to be enlightened regarding the diversity of musical expressions that could be learned and taught. Separately, but coincidentally with music education faculty, composition faculty were exploring dimensions of world music for sonic inspiration. As they sought to combine Western and world instruments, elements, and structures, they also often recognized the value of having one or more colleagues who could direct ensembles and lead the campaign to open students’ ears to musical possibilities. Ethnomusicologists today may appear to be closely associated with a department’s music history and theory faculty, but in fact many were hired as a result of cases made by music educators and composers.
Even before the establishment of ethnomusicology, there was a steady flow of "songs from many lands" apparent in published collections for school use, whose authors were often university music education faculty. Some music educators were drawn into the slow but steady rise of interest in Latin American music in the 1940s, its greater availability due largely to Charles Seeger’s pioneering work with the Pan-American Union. By the 1960s, music educators met in seminars and symposia at Yale University, Northwestern University, and Tanglewood with composers, musicologists, jazz and popular musicians, and community leaders to examine tidal-wave changes in society that would necessitate music educational reform in schools. Based on the broader repertoire to which teachers could gain access, alongside clear indications that the nation and the world was forever changed by demographic shifts and efforts at globalization, instructional materials began to appear that took account of more of the musical world. Music textbooks for use in K–8 music classes document the perception by publishers of the professional mandates of the time and their interpretation of what teachers and students would bear in the name of a diverse musical repertoire. North American editions in the 1970s presented instrumental art music traditions from China and Japan and "rhythm complexes" of West African percussion ensembles. By the 1980s, musical expressions of African Americans, Latin Americans, and Native Americans were carefully selected for their authenticity and representation; by the 1990s, series publications had included songs from all regions of the world, with notated and recorded versions performed by culture-bearers. More recent editions have ensured that songs are contextualized according to their meaning within the cultures of their origin.
Music teacher education was changing as surely as the publications themselves. Looking first to the "extras" that teachers included in their classes and moving gradually to a framing of a comprehensive music program inclusive of diversity, preservice education programs slowly and with some reluctance to change added introductory courses on ethnomusicological thinking. Typically, university catalogs of the early 1970s were prone to "Music in World Cultures" courses, taught regularly by ethnomusicologists. Solo repertoire ensembles built of international instruments, from frame drums and mbiras to recorders and ocarinas, became fixtures of music teacher training curricula extending across a raft of institutions during this period. By the end of the century, methods textbooks gave emphasis to notational and analytical descriptions for schoolhouse receptivity of global musical sounds (Campbell, 1996 and 2002), while separate texts may have fueled students anyway over music's fullest range.
More than ever before, attention has been given to the recordings that accompany notated songs, such that artist-musicians have in many cases been consulted and brought into the studio to record traditional instruments and vocals. The expansion of the repertoire of possibilities that music educators have found follows inclusion of more world and classical orchestral and jazz styles as Americans decanted still on integrated stylistic intersections across the arts.
By the 1960s, materials for school use were becoming available, and dramatic shifts were underway. In universities with well-established ethnomusicology programs, music education faculty sought to introduce a world cultures survey course, and occasionally world music ensemble courses, into their undergraduate curricula. They invited ethnomusicologists and visiting artists to their methods courses to demonstrate other musical instruments or genres, illustrating a more inclusive repertoire for schools. During the 1970s, programs at UCLA, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington led these curricular changes, while Kent State University founded its Center for the Study of the World’s Musics. Key figures championing this work both at their home institutions and through national in-service teacher training at conferences and weekend workshops included James Standifer (Michigan), Barbara Lundquist (Washington), and William Anderson (Kent State). Independently and with support from the Ford Foundation and other sources, they offered teachers new approaches to developing listening and participatory experiences in African-American forms, Sub-Saharan African music, Indian music, and Indonesian music, among others. Meanwhile, Abraham Schwadron at UCLA guided his postgraduate students toward understanding musical and contextual issues relevant to a broad repertoire suitable for schools.
The dissemination of world musics continued through workshops and clinical activity throughout the 1980s and 1990s and into the present, often led by graduates of these teacher education programs that had successfully integrated ethnomusicology into standard methods courses. Among the American music educators active in numerous clinical demonstrations of methods and materials for teaching the world’s musical cultures during this period were Bryan Burton, Ellen McCullough-Brabson, Mary Goetze, Rita Klinger, Marvalene Moore, and Mary Shamrock. And ethnomusicologists Michael Bakan, Han Kuo-Huang, Dale Olsen, Portia Maultsby, Tim Rice, and George Sawa frequently offered workshops to teachers on the music of their training and field studies. Fueled by the multicultural movement’s goals, the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) sponsored regular conference sessions on various world musics, as did the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), the American Orff-Schulwerk Association (AOSA), The College Music Society (CMS), the Organization of American Kodály Educators (OAKE), and the International Society for Music Education (ISME).
A textbook, Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (Anderson and Campbell, 1989; 2nd edition 1996), represented an effort by educators working with ethnomusicologists to recommend materials and methods for infusing a broader sampling of musical cultures into the curriculum. The Symposium on Multicultural Approaches to Music Education in 1990, co-sponsored by MENC, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the Smithsonian Institution, successfully brought together ethnomusicologists, culture-bearers, and music educators. They represented and demonstrated for teachers the musics of African American, Chinese, Hispanic American (chiefly Cuban/Caribbean and Mexican), and Native American cultures. Except for chiefly instrumental organizations such as the College Band Directors of North America (CBDNA), whose conference programs focused on preserving the longstanding U.S. concert band tradition, school music repertoire changed dramatically over the last two decades of the century.
This change was driven by the efforts of "world music educators" who workshopped teachers into the sounds and forms of world cultures. Through this burgeoning interest in a broadened view of music, leading ethnomusicologists such as Robert Garfias, David McAllester, William P. Malm, Bruno Nettl, and Anthony Seeger supported and interacted with teachers through addresses at various meetings and contributions to educational articles. Some were featured in interviews sharing their views on curricular integration of traditional musics (Campbell, 1996). Others collaborated with educators to publish resources for teachers, including books, sound recordings, and videotapes. Ethnomusicologist and publisher Judith Cook Tucker led this effort with her co-authored book Let Your Voice Be Heard (Adzinyah, Maraire, and Tucker, 1986), featuring songs from Ghana and Zimbabwe. Her World Music Press has been an important force in fostering collaborations among teachers, ethnomusicologists, and culture-bearers. The likelihood of ethnomusicologists becoming involved with teachers seems related to their status as recognized scholars on specific music-cultures: Garfias on Japanese court orchestra, McAllester on Navajo music, Malm on Japanese theatre music, Nettl on the music of the Blackfoot of Montana and of Iran, and Seeger on the musical culture of the Suya of the Brazilian Amazon. In their capacities as presidents of the Society for Ethnomusicology, journal editors, and senior members with established records, they have generously responded to calls for input and advice on world music for teachers.
The Ethnomusicological Method, Defined
Those engaged in ethnomusicology follow a research process that is uniquely ethnomusicological but seldom explained until recently. Bruno Nettl once observed of the field’s method, "In its privateness, I think ethnomusicological fieldwork ranks second after sex" (Nettl, 2002, p. 131). Even now, few texts or specific articles exist on the method: Shadows in the Field, edited by Gregory Barz and Tim Cooley (1998), a chapter on fieldwork by Helen Myers in her edited collection Ethnomusicology: An Introduction (1992), and a scattering of articles such as the classic piece by Steven Feld on sound structure as social structure (1984). While the research process is well established and has evolved over more than a century, it is not the subject of how-to manuals or numerous conference panels. It seems almost oral lore; students of ethnomusicology gather at seminars to hear their professors’ fieldwork stories, or they learn by doing through total immersion in a selected culture. Dissertations in ethnomusicology often devote only a few pages to research techniques. Very few offer a full chapter discussing the process, instead moving from a theoretical framework directly into description and interpretation of the fieldwork itself. Recent ethnographies such as Michael Bakan’s research on Balinese gamelan (1998) or Adelaida Reyes’ study of the music of Vietnamese refugees (1999) examine method more thoroughly, including the connections scholars make with performers in their pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the musical culture. These works may signal a growing emphasis on the research process, which until recently was something to do but not write about.
The hallmarks of ethnomusicological research are fieldwork, participant-performance activity, and transcription. This was not always so, research originally began as collection and notation of songs.
Early ethnomusicologists wrote notation in the field while listening, but with the arrival of recording equipment—from cumbersome Edison wax cylinders to heavy battery-operated reel-to-reel tape recorders—they could bring collections home to replay repeatedly for transcription and verification. Until the 1950s, the focus was on music itself, its sound, and how it compared to other music within and beyond the culture (Bohlman, 2002). Soon after the formation of the Society for Ethnomusicology, with anthropologists’ influence, researchers began examining music in social and cultural context, developing interest in both the music-makers and the music they made. Over succeeding decades, training in ethnomusicology emphasized language and culture courses, leading to longer fieldwork periods where researchers would live and learn the musical culture alongside its members. Gradually, interest shifted away from song collection and comparative study toward specialized culture-specific research.
By the 1970s, ethnomusicological research opened to the importance of balancing cultural insiders and outsiders: the emic (from “phonemic,” akin to the perspective of one born into a culture) and the etic (from “phonetic,” the perspective of someone outside the culture of study). After the 1980s, recognition grew that the researcher’s own personality and background should be carefully considered in the research and writing process.
Fieldwork remains central to the research endeavor, with ethnomusicologists working in far-flung or even exotic locations, from bush villages to royal courts where court musicians perform. When private foundation funding began to dissipate in the late 1970s, the field moved closer to home, including musical cultures of local ethnic, migrant, refugee, and long-standing communities. Standard fieldwork length is about one year, reflecting traditional grant durations, though more than a year is advisable. Some researchers cobble together a year’s experience through shorter visits spread over several years. The objective is to attune oneself to the culture, its music, and its musicians, and to understand how humans relate to music—and through music, to other ideas about their culture. The most direct approach has been connecting with an artist-teacher who functions as a conduit for learning the music, its meaning, and its societal functions. For ethnomusicologists, the participant-observation process of other fields becomes a participant-performance activity. Researchers learn all they can through ongoing lessons, practice sessions, and their own and others' performances. The professional relationship developed during fieldwork often extends far beyond, as consultants and teachers from distant places later travel to the ethnomusicologist’s institution in North America to perform, teach, and engage in individual and collaborative research.
Transcription remains an important part of the method, though in decidedly new ways shaped by philosophical stances and technological inventions. The folksy song transcriptions of the past have evolved from aiming at products to focusing on processes. Formerly the task was creating an “accurate” record of a song; now, transcriptions are done to help the ethnomusicologist better understand the musical culture. They become graphic ways to present the thoughts and behaviors of music-makers and frequently provide la entries into interpreting why particular musical events occur.
Ethnomusicologists have moved well beyond notation as the culmination of their research. Instead they develop musical ethnographies of individual musicians (both professional and amateur), musical families, and communities of musicians, listeners, consumers, and “users.” As they become participants in a chosen location, fieldnotes, interviews, and audio and video recordings lead to reviews and transcriptions that become the basis for interpretation, filtered through one or more theories and relevant existing literature.
Music Educators in the Ethnomusicological Method
Music education research is notably diverse in its modes of inquiry, with long-standing traditions in historical, quantitative, and qualitative approaches. Nonetheless, some academics in musicology, ethnomusicology, and theory erroneously pigeonholed their music education colleagues’ research as “statistical.” While quantitative analysis once dominated among music education scholars, the professional journals contain half a century’s worth of articles testifying to researchers engaged in historical and descriptive techniques that are not statistical. Each method may have its heyday—including the musicological and musical-analytical research of the 1950s and the rise of experimental processes by the mid-1960s—but all forms of systematic inquiry are valid when thoroughly rigorous.
In the 1980s, qualitative approaches emerged in music education, prompted by a trend among general education researchers to shift from quantitative to qualitative methods, and this qualitative path gained momentum over the decade that followed, continuing unabated. But an ethnomusicological interest also arose among music educators pursuing scholarship. Students in doctoral programs at universities where ethnomusicology was offered became intrigued by the work of ethnomusicologists, and some of their music education mentors were already drifting toward collaborative research with ethnomusicologists, if not independently writing articles and monographs on topics of music teaching and learning contexts. In schools of music with doctoral programs in both ethnomusicology and music education—again, UCLA, Michigan, Washington, and Kent State, for example—it was inevitable that music education research would emerge that not only considered world music inclusion in the curriculum but also used fieldwork, participant-performance, and transcription effectively.
Among the pioneers applying the ethnomusicological method to music education issues were PhD students at the University of Washington and Kent State University in the 1980s. At Kent State, Gregory Booth (1986) studied the pedagogical techniques of master instrumentalists in India, describing their verbal and non-verbal behaviors during teaching and the lesson atmosphere in an extended fieldwork project. His transcriptions of master-student interactions in lessons, including musical segments, clearly draw from ethnomusicological method. At the University of Washington, Ramona Holmes (1989), acting as a participant-observer, explored the aural-oral teaching techniques of a fiddle player instructing beginners in a community outreach program. This led her to develop a template for aural instruction applicable in many teaching contexts. She used careful ethnomusicological transcriptions of class sessions, including sample musical segments of the fiddle teacher’s demonstrations and student attempts to imitate the model.
Their work stands as early examples of blended scholarship employing this method. Both had training as public school teachers, amateur musicians acquainted with traditional forms (Booth as a tabla player and Holmes as a fiddler of Estonian and Celtic traditions), and they had both taken formal ethnomusicology courses at their university.
At the same time, some music education doctoral students studied ethnomusicology to learn about a broader repertoire, others observed ethnomusicologists’ methods. A few also enrolled in anthropology courses to understand intricacies of fieldwork in a culture, whether distant or close, inside schools or elsewhere. Kari Veblen (1991) identified traditional musicians in Ireland to observe and interview, and she remained engaged as a participant member of the Irish musical community during her study. Rita Klinger’s (1996) work on culture-bearers in the classroom is also notable for its ethnographic approach; living within both school and a sponsoring organization provided insight into the nature of resident artists in schools. She spoke with Native American singers and storytellers and transcribed samples of their performances and teaching interactions. Likewise, Sheila Feay-Shaw’s study of how Ghanaian music is passed by master musicians and teachers isethographically informed: as a participant-performer in one musician’s lessons and a observer of others’ classes and lessons (2002). Her detailed account of own struggle mastering complex cross rhythms ideally represents the reflexivity more fully used as central in the ethnomusicological method.
The Music Teaching/ Learning Interests of Ethnomusicologists
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The move to view music as culture also prompted inquiries into who teaches and who learns, along with the methods involved (Merriam, 1964). Bruno Nettl stressed the importance of his consultants as teachers, citing the Arapaho singer Will Shakespeare, who taught him a wealth of traditional melodies for transcription, and the Persian master Nour Ali-Bouromand, who imparted the radif —a set of micromelodies essential for improvisation (1984). Over the last quarter-century especially, dissertations, monographs, journal articles, conference papers, and even films have become vital for understanding who teaches and learns music, the contexts of instruction, and how informal learning via enculturation takes place. Ethnomusicologists have also given limited attention to the politics and economics of music learning. These investigations not only yield a fuller knowledge of specific music cultures but also deepen understanding of music’s sociological dimensions as human thought and behavior.
Some scholars have provided detailed accounts of learning to play an instrument, sing, or dance in societies open to all members’ musical participation; others have described learning within the constraints of social class, gender, or ethnicity. John Blacking (1967) showed how Venda children learned music by placing themselves at the center of performances and practice sessions, absorbing skills almost by osmosis toward their intended role in an egalitarian music-making community. For John Bailey (2001), whose thirty-year study of the Afghan lutes dutar and rubab spanned three decades, learning to perform leads the practitioner into “the cognition of performance”—the active movements, kinesthetic-spatial relationships, and thought processes of those at a culture’s musical core. Henry Kingsbury (1988) examined the training of conservatory students, an elite venue where the talented few judged capable of high-level performance reap the rewards of formal instruction. The exclusionary effect of gender on music learning comes through in essays edited by Ellen Koskoff (1987), where women barred from certain instruments, songs, and genres turned to other musical outlets to satisfy their needs. Daniel Neuman’s classic study of North Indian classical music training describes teacher-student roles within the gharana system, where heredity and family status restrict access. Works by Michael Bakan (1999) and Tim Rice (1994), which recount their journeys as cultural outsiders learning traditional instruments, reveal which skills transfer, and which do not, from one’s first culture to an adopted one.
Ethnomusicologists have studied music learning across formal and informal settings—conservatories, schools, private homes, and outdoor spaces. They have examined the use of verbal and nonverbal techniques, vocalization and solmization, aural and oral methods, rehearsal strategies, and the pace of instruction from teacher to student (Campbell, 1991/2001). In his account of North Indian gharanas, Neuman described the disciplined practice called riaz, where students dedicate long hours to rigorous drills until calluses on their hands and fingerpads attest to their effort (1980). In studying the Bulgarian gaida (bagpipe), Rice noted the combined aural, visual, and tactile means of learning phrases that later link to others and are recalled in improvisation (1994). Similarly, Bakan highlighted the complementary modalities essential for developing skills and repertoire, where students watch the master’s hands and imitate closely (1999). Blacking observed that Venda children do not necessarily learn songs in simple-to-complex order; instead, they first pick the tunes they hear most often, even if structurally simpler (1967). Paul Berliner found that many jazz musicians transcribe entire solos from recordings and also extract short phrases to build vocabulary for future improvisations (1994).
Comparative music education remains in its infancy, yet ethnomusicological research speaks directly to educators wishing to understand diverse and common practices across cultures—pedagogical processes, institutional models, and curricular structures. Understanding aural learning, including imitation, improvisation, the presence, partial use, or total absence of notation, and cultural rehearsal strategies is more than academic curiosity. These matters concern practicing teachers seeking the most effective instruction for their students, who gain confidence from knowing that such approaches work elsewhere in the world.
**Potential Intersections
The separate subdisciplines of ethnomusicology and music education draw on long histories of concentrated work in distinctive research and practice domains. Ethnomusicologists commit themselves to studying music in culture and as culture, while teaching culture-specific and cross‑cultural systems of musical thought and behavior, mostly at university level. Music educators aim for best practices in developing students’ musical skills and knowledge of specific repertoires, while guiding K‑12 learners toward a meta‑view of music in the wider world—through continual adjustments to teaching and findings from their own research on effective instruction. Yet intersections between ethnomusicology and music education have increased over time. As music educators broaden their repertoire and seek research processes for studying music transmission, ethnomusicology offers valuable insights.
Conversely, ethnomusicologists would benefit from music educators’ work as practitioners and scholars. Teachers of world music survey courses and ethnomusicology seminars could gain from knowing the curricular models developed in music education for short‑ and long‑term student learning, as well as instructional techniques proven in academic and performance settings. Careful reading of music‑education studies on communicating information, guiding discussion, and facilitating participatory experiences could enhance the quality of their courses.
Educators have devoted considerable effort to understanding psychological strategies for students who have no prior training, little motivation, or who make up such large groups that intimate music instruction seems impossible to deliver. Music‑education research on teaching effectiveness in ensembles and lectures identifies factors that predict effective instruction—eye contact, facial expressions, vocal variety and gestures, and teacher‑student proximity. For ethnomusicologists without direct experience or training in preparing, delivering, and assessing instruction, music educators could offer valuable advice.
In their own research, ethnomusicologists might find that understanding standard research models from music education (fashioned from education, psychology, and sociology) provides useful techniques and processes for studying musical cultures. At the very least, examining diverse methods could yield fresh perspectives on ongoing ethnomusicological questions. Quantifying data can sometimes be relevant to understanding musicians, dancers, and audience behaviors in a given repertoire, and deserves consideration alongside traditional fieldwork methods. Furthermore, while interpreting musical‑culture systems for pure knowledge is a worthy goal, collaborative, practical applications of ethnomusicological research with music educators are only beginning to be explored.
Some thirty‑five ago, Blacking predicted that “Ethnomusicology has the power to create a revolution in the world of music and music education” (1971: 4). That prediction has come to pass, visible in the broader conceptualization of music that enters academic courses and performance experiences for students at all levels, and through questions, frameworks, and research processes that straddle both fields. The reverse may also hold: music education might make ethnomusicology more relevant and even revolutionize it. Only the future will reveal this possibility, but it is reasonable to accept now that the intersection of these disciplines is where understanding music, education, and culture can deepen. At this juncture, where two dynamic traditions meet, new knowledge may emerge. From the pure to the practical, this crossroads may prove critical to future insights in each field.