Epistemology
The relevance and implications of insider and outsider distinctions within ethnomusicological writing and practice has been a subject of lengthy debate for decades, invoked by Bruno Nettl, Timothy Rice, and others. The question that causes such debate lies in the qualifications for an ethnomusicologist to research another culture when they represent an outsider, dissecting a culture that doesn't belong to them.
In The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-One Issues and Concepts, Nettl discusses personal and global issues pertaining to field researchers, particularly those from a Western academic background. In a chapter that recounts his field recordings among Native Americans of the northern plains, for instance, he attempts to come to terms with the problematic history of ethnographic fieldwork, and envision a future trajectory for the practice in the 21st century and beyond. Considering that ethnomusicology is a field that intersects in a vast array of other fields in the social sciences and beyond, it focuses on studying people, and it is appropriate to encounter the issue of "making the unfamiliar, familiar," a phrase coined by William McDougall that is well known in social psychology. As in social psychology, the "unfamiliar" is encountered in three different ways during ethnomusicological work: 1) two different cultures come into contact and elements of both are not immediately explicable to the other; 2) experts within a society produce new knowledge, which is then communicated to the public; and 3) active minorities communicate their perspective to the majority.
Nettl has also been vocal about the effect of subjective understanding on research. As he describes, a fieldworker might attempt immersing themselves into an outsider culture to gain full understanding. This, however, can begin to blind the researcher and take away the ability to be objective in what is being studied. The researcher begins to feel like an expert in a culture's music when, in fact, they remain an outsider no matter the amount of research, because they are from a different culture. The background knowledge of each individual influences the focus of the study because of the comfort level with the material. Nettl characterizes the majority of outsiders as "simply members of Western society who study non-Western music, or members of affluent nations who study the music of the poor, or maybe city folk who visit the backward villages in their hinterland." This points to possible Eurocentric origins of researching foreign and exotic music. Within this outsider/insider dynamic and framework unequal power relations come into focus and question.
In addition to his critiques of the outsider and insider labels, Nettl creates a binary that roughly equates to Western and Nonwestern. He points out what he feels are flaws in Western thinking through the analyses of multiple societies, and promotes the notion of collaborating, with a greater focus on acknowledging the contribution of native experts. He writes, "The idea of joint research by an 'insider' and an 'outsider' has been mentioned as a way of bridging the chasms." In spite of his optimism, the actualization of this practice has been limited and the degree to which this can solve the insider/outsider dilemma is questionable. He believes that every concept is studied through a personal perspective, but "a comparison of viewpoints may give the broadest possible insight."
The position of ethnomusicologists as outsiders looking in on a music culture, has been discussed using Said's theory of Orientalism. This manifests itself in the notion that music championed by the field may be, in many ways, a Western construction based on an imagined or romanticized view of "the Other" situated within a colonial mindset. According to Nettl, there are three beliefs of insiders and members of the host culture that emerge that lead to adverse results. The three are as follows: (1) "Ethnomusicologists come to compare non-Western musics or other "other" traditions to their own... in order to show that the outsider's own music is superior," (2)Ethnomusicologists want to use their own approaches to non-Western music;" and (3) "They come with the assumption that there is such a thing as African or Asian or American Indigenous music, disregarding boundaries obvious to the host." As Nettl argues, some of these concerns are no longer valid, as ethnomusicologists no longer practice certain orientalist approaches that homogenize and totalize various musics. He explores further intricacies within the insider/outsider dichotomy by deconstructing the very notion of insider, contemplating what geographic, social, and economic factors distinguish them from outsiders. He notes that scholars of "more industrialized African and Asian nations" see themselves as outsiders in regards to rural societies and communities. Even though these individuals are in the minority, and ethnomusicology and its scholarship is generally written from a western perspective, Nettl disputes the notion of the native as the perpetual other and the outsider as the westerner by default.
Timothy Rice is another author who discusses the insider/outsider debate in detail but through the lens of his own fieldwork in Bulgaria and his experience as an outsider trying to learn Bulgarian music. In his experience, told through his book May it Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music, he had a difficult time learning Bulgarian music because his musical framework was founded in a Western perspective. He had to "broaden his horizons" and try instead to learn the music from a Bulgarian framework in order to learn to play it sufficiently. Although he did learn to play the music, and the Bulgarian people said that he had learned it quite well, he admitted that "there are still areas of the tradition that elude my understanding and explanation. Some sort of culturally sensitive understanding will be necessary to close this gap."
Ultimately, Rice argues that despite the impossibility of being objective one's work ethnomusicologists may still learn much from self-reflection. In his book, he questions about whether or not one can be objective in understanding and discussing art and, in accordance with the philosophies of phenomenology, argues that there can be no such objectivity since the world is constructed with preexisting symbols that distort any "true" understanding of the world we are born into. He then suggests that no ethnomusicologist can ever come to an objective understanding of a music nor can an ethnomusicologist understand foreign music in the same way that a native would understand it. In other words, an outsider can never become an insider. However, an ethnomusicologist can still come to a subjective understanding of that music, which then shapes that scholar's understanding of the outside world. From his own scholarship, Rice suggests "five principles for the acquisition of cognitive categories in this instrumental tradition" among Bulgarian musicians. However, as an outsider, Rice notes that his "understanding passed through language and verbal cognitive categories" whereas the Bulgarian instrumental tradition lacked "verbal markers and descriptors of melodic form" so "each new student had to generalize and learn on his own the abstract conceptions governing melodies without verbal or visual aids." With these two different methods for learning music, an outsider searching for verbal descriptions versus an insider learning from imitating, represent the essential differences between Rice's culture and the Bulgarian culture. These inherent musical differences blocked him from reaching the role of an insider.
Not only is there the question of being on the outside while studying another culture, but also the question of how to go about studying one's own society. Nettl's approach would be to determine how the culture classifies their own music. He is interested in the categories they would create to classify their own music. In this way, one would be able to distinguish themselves from the outsider while still having slight insider insight. Kingsbury believes it is impossible to study a music outside of one's culture, but what if that culture is your own? One must be aware of the personal bias they may impose on the study of their own culture.
Kingsbury, an American pianist and ethnomusicologist, decided to reverse the common paradigm of a Westerner performing fieldwork in a non-western context, and apply fieldwork techniques to a western subject. In 1988 he published Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System, which detailed his time studying an American northeastern conservatory. He approached the conservatory as if it were a foreign land, doing his best to disassociate his experiences and prior knowledge of American conservatory culture from his study. In the book, Kingsbury analyzes conservatory conventions he and his peers may have overlooked, such as the way announcements are disseminated, to make assertions about the conservatory's culture. For example, he concludes that the institutional structure of the conservatory is "strikingly decentralized." In light of professors' absences, he questions the conservatory's commitment to certain classes. His analysis of the conservatory contains four main elements: a high premium on teachers' individuality, teachers' role as nodal points that reinforce a patron-client-like system of social organization, this subsequent organization's enforcement of the aural traditions of musical literacy, and the conflict between this client/patron structure and the school's "bureaucratic administrative structure." Ultimately, it seems, Kingsbury thinks the conservatory system is inherently flawed. He emphasizes that he doesn't intend to "chide" the conservatory, but his critiques are nonetheless far from complimentary.
Another example of western ethnomusicologists studying their native environments comes from Craft's My Music: Explorations of Music in Daily Life. The book contains interviews from dozens of (mostly) Americans of all ages, genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds, who answered questions about the role of music in their lives. Each interviewee had their own unique, necessary, and deeply personal internal organization of their own music. Some cared about genre, others organized the music important to themselves by artist. Some considered music deeply important to them, some did not care about music at all.
Applied
Applied ethnomusicology uses music as a device to build bridges and create positive change in the world. “Today applied ethnomusicology is established as one of the strongest branches of ethnomusicology”. Jeff Titon thinks of ethnomusicology as the study of people making music, where applied ethnomusicology is “a music centered intervention into a particular community whose purpose is to benefit that community, for example a social improvement, a musical benefit, a cultural good, or an economic advantage.” Applied ethnomusicology is people-focused and guided by ethical and humanitarian principles. The first time that the term applied ethnomusicology appeared in an official SEM publication was is 1964 when The Anthropology of Music Alan Merriam wrote “The ultimate aim of the study of man involves the question of whether one is searching knowledge for its own sake or is attempting to provide solutions for practically applied problems.” The purpose of an applied ethnomusicology is the latter, knowledge for the sake of positive impact on humanitarian issues. Thus, a part of applied ethnomusicology is advocacy as opposed to solely participating as the observer. This includes working with a community to move social initiatives forward, and “acting as an intermediary between cultural insiders and outsiders”. Applied ethnomusicology became widely known in the 1990s but many fieldworkers were practicing it long before the name was established. For example, David McAllester and Bruno Nettl’s fieldwork on Enemy Way music is very much an example of applied ethnomusicology, where ethical values were closely considered and where the approach itself is comprehensive and designed to share understanding for the betterment of the Navajo nation. Here is an example of how applied ethnomusicology goes further than just considering music’s role within culture, but what music is “conceived to be” within a culture. Clearly, a crucial part of applied ethnomusicology is fieldwork and the way in which fieldwork is conducted as well as the way the fieldworker speaks on and acts towards the subject matter post-fieldwork. In an interview David McAllester revealed how he saw his role after conducting fieldwork on the Navajo Nation, “ And my experience, once I got among the Navajos, caused me to drop out of anthropology. I dropped the scientific point of view to a large extent, and I became…um, an advocate of the Navajos, rather than an objective viewer. And I was certainly among those in ethnomusicology who began to value the… the views of the people who make the music, more than the value of the trained scholars who were studying it.” This is the essence of applied ethnomusicology, to find a to play in the research you conduct during and after conducting research.
Ethnomusicology and Western music
Early in the history of the field of ethnomusicology, there was debate as to whether ethnomusicological work could be done on the music of Western society, or whether its focus was exclusively toward non-Western music. Some early scholars, such as Mantle Hood, argued that ethnomusicology had two potential focuses: the study of all non-European art music, and the study of the music found in a given geographical area.
However, even as early as the 1960s some ethnomusicologists were proposing that ethnomusicological methods should also be used to examine Western music. For instance, Alan Merriam, in a 1960 article, defines ethnomusicology not as the study of non-Western music, but as the study of music in culture.[9] In doing so he discards some of the 'external' focus proposed by the earlier (and contemporary) ethnomusicologists, who regarded non-Western music as more relevant to the attention of scholars. Moreover, he expands the definition from being centered on music to including the study of culture as well.
Modern ethnomusicologists, for the most part, consider the field to apply to western music as well as non-western. However, ethnomusicology, especially in the earlier years of the field, was still primarily focused on non-western cultures; it is only in recent years that ethnomusicological scholarship involved more diversity with respect to both the cultures being studied and the methods by which these cultures may be studied. Ian Pace has discussed how questions regarding what exactly is within ethnomusicology's purview tend to be political rather than scholarly questions. He also states that biases become readily apparent when examining how ethnomusicologists approach Western vs non-Western music.
Despite the increased acceptance of ethnomusicological examinations of Western music, modern ethnomusicologists still focus overwhelmingly on non-Western music. One of the few major examinations of Western art music from an ethnomusicological focus, as well as one of the earliest, is Henry Kingsbury's book Music, Talent, and Performance. In his book, Kingsbury studies a conservatory in the north-eastern United States. His examination of the conservatory uses many of the traditional fieldwork methods of ethnomusicology; however, Kingsbury was studying a group which he is a member of. Part of his approach was to think of his own culture as primitive and tribal to lend it a sense of 'otherness', upon which much of anthropology's theory is based (Kingsbury cites J.M. Weatherford's ethnography of US Congress as the reason he chose this technique).
Bruno Nettl, when writing about signs and symbols, addressed symbolism in Western music culture. He cites a specific example of a music analyst interpreting music Beethoven in a literal fashion according to various pieces of literature. The analyst assigns direct meanings to motifs and melodies according to the literature. Nettl states that this reveals how members of Western music culture are inclined to view art music as symbolic.
Some ethnomusicological work focuses less on either Western or non-Western music specifically. For example, Martin Stokes' work regarding various aspects of identity addresses many cultures, both Western and non-Western. Stokes wrote about gender as it relates to music in various cultures, including Western, analyzing the fairly common phenomena of musicians seemingly presiding over events that are often related to issues of gender, or how a culture may seek to "desex" musicians as a form of control. The insights that Stokes makes are not exclusive to any culture. Stokes also dedicates much of his writing on identity, nationality, and location to how this manifests in Western music. He notes the presence of Irish music in migrant communities in England and American as a way in which individuals locate themselves in the world.
Because ethnomusicology is not limited to the study of music from non-Western cultures, it has the potential to encompass various approaches to the study of the many musics around the world and emphasize their different contexts and dimensions (cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, etc.) beyond their isolated sound components. Thus, Western popular music is also subject to ethnomusicological interest. This ethnomusicological work has been called urban ethnomusicology.
Thomas Turino has written about the influence of the media on consumerism in Western society and that it is a bi-directional effect. A large part of self-discovery and feeling accepted in social groups is related to common musical tastes. Record companies and producers of music recognize this reality and respond by catering to specific groups. In the same way that "sounds and imagery piped in over the radio and Internet and in videos shape adolescent sense of gendered selves as well as generational and more specific cohort identities," so do individuals shape the media's marketing responses to musical tastes in Western popular music culture. The culmination of identity groups (teenagers in particular) across the country represents a significant force that can shape the music industry based on what is being consumed.
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