Book 79 - Timothy Rice "Ethnomusicology"

[jazzy_dave]

Timothy Rice "Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press)




This is quite a good introduction to the subject. t doesn't go into depths but goes over the main definitions, topics and research methods employed by Ethnomusicologists.

However, it is not a book about ethnic music or world music as such. The point is: when an academic discovers a new phenomenon he/she writes about it. Then along comes someone else and writes about it and the first writer's reception of it. Then a third person and a fourth. Eventually, you get a literature that is solely about the methodology of discussing the phenomenon, and the phenomenon itself gets ignored. Such is this book. But also it is about the academic discipline of ethnomusicology as a sub-discipline of anthropology, it is not about ethnic music. It is about the phenomenon of musicality not just from the performers' point of view, but also from the listeners'. In other words, the human being is a (possibly the only) musical animal, whether performing or consuming, and that is of anthropological/zoological interest.

Perhaps if one wanted to get to know ethnic or folk music then I would point them in the direction of Alan Lomax or Phillip V Bohlman's "World Music A Very Short Introduction" instead.