Following the Elephant

Ethnomusicologists Contemplate Their Discipline

Bruno Nettl

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780252082559
• eBook ISBN: 9780252099601
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Higher Education

In Following the Elephant, Bruno Nettl edits articles drawn from fifty years of the pioneering journal Ethnomusicology. The roster of acclaimed scholars hail from across generations, using other works in the collection as launching points for dialogues on the history and accomplishments of the field. Nettl divides the collection into three sections. In the first, authors survey ethnomusicology from perspectives that include thoughts on defining and conceptualizing the field and its concepts. The second section offers milestones in the literature that critique major works. The authors look at what separates ethnomusicology from other forms of music research and discuss foundational issues. The final section presents scholars considering ethnomusicology--including recent trends--from the perspective of specific, but abiding, strands of thought. Contributors: Charlotte J. Frisbie, Mieczylaw Kolinski, Gerhard Kubik, George List, Alan P. Merriam, Bruno Nettl, David Pruett, Adelaida Reyes, Timothy Rice, Jesse D. Ruskin, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Gabriel Solis, Jeff Todd Titon, J. Lawrence Witzleben, and Deborah Wong

PART I

Ethnomusicology, the Field and the Society1

DAVID P. MCALLESTER / Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut

The roots of the Society for Ethnomusicology in the work of Stumpf, Ellis, Hornbostel and others and in the Zeitschrift fiir Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft have been delineated ably and in detail in earlier issues of ETHNOMUSICOLOGY and elsewhere (Seeger 1956; Rhodes 1956; Kolinski 1957; Nettl 1956: 26–44).

My pleasant task is to recount the developments that have taken place in our Society, and in the field of ethnomusicology in the United States, since 1953. The description of events at such close range cannot be termed history but should be considered as an interpretation, or what one person thinks has been happening. I hope the thoughts set down here will elicit from other interested persons the corrections and amplifications that will help round out the picture.

This particular decade has been more eventful for ethnomusicology than has all the history of our field before the founding of the Society in 1953. The formation of the Society was only one indication of the ground swell of a very large international movement with many manifestations indeed. Musically this ten-year era is very much akin to the Age of Discovery with Prince Henrys suddenly appearing on the horizons of a dozen new continents at once.

If any gauge is needed for the strength of the work it can be seen with sociological perspective in the rise of institutions. Where once was an archive in Berlin and two or three beginnings in the United States, are now innumerable sophisticated collections both special and general. Where once was a single perishing publication are now at least a dozen journals of all sorts, national and international, including one devoted to archiving. Most of them represent organizations or societies and this means regular meetings of scholars. Very importantly, where once were wax cylinders is now magnatic tape, affording a convenience and fidelity undreamed of a few years ago. In addition to all this there is the popular enthusiasm for folk music which is beginning to extend to world music. In ways perhaps too subtle to assess this awakening of general interest means support for the scholar.

A recent survey lists thirty educational institutions in the United States offering anywhere from one course, in or related to ethnomusicology, to as many as fourteen (Winkelman 1963). In addition there are institutions and have been special meetings that are hard to classify, such as the Institute for Ethnomusicology at UCLA and the Symposium on Ethnomusicological Field Method at the University of Washington held in March 1963. Large scale projects involving a number of researchers focussed on a single problem are another new manifestation in the field.

I shall discuss certain of these indications of the impressive vitality of ethnomusicology in my effort to describe what I think are major trends in our field and in our Society. Since the borderline between suggesting trends and coming right out and making predictions is a fine one, I shall not hesitate to assume a prophetic mien.

The emphasis in our work alternates between studying music to find out more about culture and vice versa. Which it is, of course, is simply a function of the interest and background of the particular investigator. The marriage between music and the social sciences is celebrated anew with each issue of our journal. It is a sometimes uneasy union but it is evident that since each partner has so much to learn from the other, neither can afford a divorce.

Most of the Jobs Are in Music

It is interesting that at the beginning of our decade the academic jobs in ethnomusicology seemed to be in a few anthropology departments and that now they are much more plentiful and seem to be largely in music departments. It is in the latter that ethnomusicology majors are beginning to appear. The plain fact is that music departments are beginning to shake themselves awake to the fact that music, real music, is a world phenomenon. There are more and larger music departments than there are anthropology and sociology departments in American universities. It is to be expected therefore that greater academic muscle will be brought into play by musicians than by social scientists. More degrees in ethnomusicology will go to Calliope than to Caliban.

This may be seen at UCLA where the largest graduate program in the field is to be found (Hood 1957). The extent of the training offered at Los Angeles does not appear in the Winkelman survey. This is especially true with regard to the many “study groups” in the theory and performance of different musics such as Mexican mariachi, Javanese gamelan, African drumming, and Chinese orchestra. The excellent argument is made that the actual performance of an exotic music is essential to the full understanding of its structure and purpose. A strong aspect of the UCLA program is the presence of native musicians from the many cultures represented. Equally important is the practice of sending the advanced student to the country whose music he is studying for one or two years of research and apprenticeship. When he returns such a student is likely to be in a position to write the first definitive book in English on the music of his area of study (Maim 1959) and typically carries the study group idea with him as he begins his teaching career: Robert E. Brown, South India, Wesleyan University; Robert Garfias, Japan, University of Washington; William P. Maim, Japan, University of Michigan.

The anthropology in the UCLA program is “home grown.” The students who undergo a musical apprenticeship overseas in India, Africa, etc. develop what anthropological perspective they may from the necessities of first hand experience. This method has its disadvantages but at present the program at Los Angeles is moving towards intensive musical analysis in terms of computer theory and melograph techniques rather than a deepening exploration of the insights of the social sciences.

More Money in Connection with Anthropology

To look at the other side of our equation, the group research projects are finding their impetus in anthropology. For better or worse, the sciences at present are receiving greater support from national foundations than are the arts. Two current programs rising out of anthropology may be cited to illustrate this trend. Alan Lomax is investigating a system of musical analysis which involves linguistic, psychological, physiological and social factors as well as musical ones. The National Institute of Mental Health is supporting this two year study which involves Victor Grauer and Conrad Arensberg and has benefited from the advice of Margaret Mead, Edith Trager and others. The publications of the project have appeared in anthropological journals (Lomax 1959, 1962). It is significant that the scope of the project permits secretarial help—a commonplace in the sciences but an unheard-of luxury in ethnomusicological research. Wesleyan University has received a grant from the National Science Foundation for a three-year study of Navaho ceremonialism. Here again the emphasis is to be on the interrelatedness of various aspects of culture. The study is linguistic and sociological as well as musicological. Charlotte Johnson, Katchen Coley, and Gerry Johnson, all graduate students, are assisting in the project and here again secretarial help is available.

Due to the availability of large funds, “task force” projects are on the increase in anthropology. The Columbia University project in culture and linguistics under George Herzog included the study of Comanche music (McAllester 1949) and the Harvard University studies in comparative values included ethnomusicology as an avenue to the understanding of deep-seated attitudes (McAllester 1954). Nicholas England’s studies of Bushman music in the Kalahari Desert have been in cooperation with an extensive joint project, the Marshall-Peabody Museum Expeditions, involving many people, mostly anthropologists.

More Success in Interrelating the Two Disciplines

How well music and social science may be blended in a single institution is more likely to be a matter of atmosphere and personalities than of disciplinary ideologies. The University of Hawaii may be cited for the happy interrelation between the music department and anthropology, as represented by the Department of Anthropology at the University and the Bernice P. Bishop Museum of Honolulu. The East-West Center at the University of Hawaii profits by this cooperation and its combination of students from Asia, Oceania, and the United States. Hawaii also demonstrated its aloha spirit last year by its invitation to an anthropologist to be a visiting professor of music. Indiana University shows excellent promise of cooperation between music and the social sciences with Walter Kaufmann in music, Alan Merriam newly appointed in anthropology, and the superb Archive of Folk and Primitive Music under the direction of George List. The recent appointment of Nicholas England to the Music Department at Columbia and the purchase of the Laura Boulton Collection gives this department unusual strength. Willard Rhodes’s extensive training in anthropology and England’s anthropological research in connection with his Bushman studies gives this team an impressive breadth of perspective. Richard Waterman and Bruno Nettl teach in the anthropology and music departments, respectively, of Wayne State University. The projected Theater-Art-Music Center at Wesleyan University will include ethnomusicology under its aegis. This reflects a mutuality of interest in these departments that suggests an interesting variation on the music-anthropology axis. A similar trend can be discerned at the University of Washington where music and the Center for Asian Arts (including theater) are in active cooperation. It was the Center, at Washington, that sponsored an unusual and imaginative symposium on ethnological field method this spring. A glance at the many offerings at the University of Hawaii shows a similar awareness of the mutual dependency of the arts, particularly dance and music.

The examples given here were chosen to exemplify the trends that have developed in our decade. Their effects on the Society as such are represented in various ways in the Journal. The intimate relationship of music to dance has been acknowledged from the first by the inclusion of dance articles, bibliography, and news, and a dance editor on the staff of the Journal. One can feel sure that a similar hospitality will be extended to the graphic arts and literature as research finds the way to significant relationships between them and music. What will become then of our already difficult name is hard to imagine: “Ethno-Arts”? “Ethnohumanities”? In any case inter relatedness is clearly a permanent part of the ethos of the Society.

The Journal, the principal enterprise of the Society, is finding increasing support in the scholarly world at large. More subsidies of various kinds from universities, foundations, and other institutions, a steady growth in size as finances permit, are all indications of good health and gratifying recognition.

The Society serves as a clearing house for information in ethnomusicology and related fields. Inquiries of many kinds come to the officers and editors and the existence of the Society enables them to find the right person to answer these inquiries. As this function develops it seems entirely likely that the Society as such will come to act as referee in a variety of scholarly contexts. Hopefully it may find itself in a financial position to offer grants-in-aid for research. Here the possibility would arise of a Board sponsored by the Society which could use our resources to suggest fruitful or crucial areas of research and introduce an element of planning into the activity of the field as a whole.

Our initial purpose when the Newsletter was begun, ten years ago, was to encourage communication between ethnomusicologists and foster scholarship in the field. The pages of our Journal and the forum of our meetings have contributed considerably toward these goals. It is plain that there are still other ways, dreamed of and as yet undreamed of.

Note

1. This paper is based, in part, on remarks made by the author at the 1962 annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Bloomington, Indiana.

References Cited

Hood, Mantle

1957“Training and research methods in ethnomusicology,” Ethnomusicology Newsletter no. 11, 2–8.

Kolinski, Mieczyslaw

1957“Ethnomusicology, its problems and methods,” Ethnomusicology Newsletter no. 10, 1–7.

Lomax, Alan

1959“Folk song style,” American Anthropologist 61:927–54.

1962“Song structure and social structure,” Ethnology 1:425–51.

McAllester, David P.

1954Enemy Way music. Cambridge, Mass.: Pe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III