Wednesday, September 26, 2012
"Society for Ethnomusicology" journal
Browsing through some of the back issues of the "Society for Ethnomusicology" journal (in Orwig library, where I could see the original copies, as well as on the web via JSTOR) was a much more interesting experience than I initially expected it to be. It seems that the journal originated as a hand-typed newsletter that was distributed to known scholars. Interested members were able to send in their addresses to be added to the mailing list - just thinking about the effort involved to get out a simple newsletter makes me tired, especially in comparison to sending out a quick email to a listerv today.
Volume 1, No. 2 seems to be where the action begins after the initial mailing; scholars start writing in to share their work. I was baffled to see some of the letters printed in French, German, and other languages! Another piece of technology to be glad for: Google Translate. I was also amused to see many of the same topics we debate in class being discussed in the newsletter: F.A. Kuttner writes, following a description of his work in "Far Eastern archeo-musicology," "I have come to believe that the whole system of comparative methods is obsolete and inadequate, and that something else and much better will have to replace it if we are going to expect any significant progress in the future."
We can also note in these "notes and news" sections throughout the 1950s that the majority of work reported involves researchers making recordings of music; there is very little mention of talking to the musicians or audiences at all. However, these researchers clearly were interested in talking to each other, as evidenced by the account of their first meeting, held in 1956. Besides elections of officers, it seems that the most important resolution made at this half-hour long meeting (it's clearly stated that it began at 2:15 and ended at 2:45 pm) was to remove the hyphen to create the current term "ethnomusicology" as one word, as opposed to the previous term "ethno-musicology."
Despite Kuttner's early enthusiasm for moving away from comparative musicology, it seems that in 1957 many researchers were still spending the majority of their time on recording and transcribing melodies. Mantle Hood's article in Vol. 1, No. 11 does begin with a discussion of the definition of "ethnomusicology," but ends disappointingly in my opinion. The entire last page (pg. 7) involves a description of all the materials necessary for a researcher's transcription, but little about what the transcription can help with.
Overall, it was quite interesting to delve through these momentos from an earlier time in this study. For me, it was perhaps most interesting to imagine how at the forefront these men and women must have felt, beginning a new journal to go with a growing field of study.
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I think it's interesting how you picked up on the community of ethnomusicology scholars in the 1950s. It seems to me that with the growth of technology, this community might be different in today's world. I think that technology has made it easier for ethnomusicologists to be exposed to one another's work and to comment on it. Do you think that the sense of community in the field of ethnomusicology has changed since the 50s? I'm curious as to what factors make the communities similar and/or different.
ReplyDeleteClearly, it's a much larger community today than it was with these scholars in the 1950s, and their methods of communication have become much more instantaneous via email and the internet. It almost seems to me as though the community of ethno scholars is less cohesive than it used to be.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of technology making it easier to communicate, the first issue of the newsletter was published in December of 1953, and mentions that several scholars started to ponder the creation of a society for ethno-musicology in the spring of that year (which probably served as the impetus for the newsletter). Then in January of 1956, they announce the creation of the Society for Ethno-Musicology. So it took almost three years to go from conception to realization. I wonder what contributed more to this seemingly large timeframe: the communications technology, or the process of creating such a society?
ReplyDeleteA thoughtful post, augmented in the comment thread with more ideas about the relationship between various communication technologies and the formation of dispersed communities. Your aside about Mantle Hood's piece also suggests further avenues of inquiry: did Hood seem to imply that transcription was somehow valuable for its own sake, or were its possible uses self-evident to him based on existing common practice in comparative musicology? Or was he actually offering a corrective to existing practice, by telling people how they *should* be approaching the task? (Methodological prescriptions can often tell us a lot about what people have actually been doing, which presumably inspired the author to formulate guidelines.)
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