Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Critical Review #1: Myers "Ethnomusicology: an Introduction"

In this selection from Ethnomusicology: an Introduction, Myers offers both a history of and a commentary on the practice of ethnomusicology, beginning with Rousseau in the 1760s and continuing through to the modern day. It seems that though ethnomusicology was conceived of much earlier, it did not truly come into practice until Edison devised the means by which people were able to listen to the music of other people, the gramophone. Myers next takes us on a whirlwind tour of this area of study in the 1900s, discussing the origin of the term "ethnomusicology" in the 1950s (rather than "comparative musicology," the previous term) and the various definitions of ethnomusicology that came up in the 1960s-70s. Finally, she looks at recent work, which has been much more in the field than before, and the recent "mixing and matching" of formerly disparate forms of music.

Question: How does the "internet age" change the way that we as modern-day ethnomusicologists can look at music?

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