In The Harmless Drudge: Defining Ethnomusicology, Nettl defines ethnomusicology as the following: "Ethnomusicology is the study of music in a culture...[and] all the musical manifestations of a society...from a comparative and realistic perspective...using fieldwork." With this definition, it is easily shown that ethnomusicology is directly related to world music pedagogy. As discussed in Thinking About Music (Wade) and The Contextual Dimension of Music Experience (Reimer), people must study the music of other cultures in order to correctly represent them in another culture's classroom. If we do not study the music in its originally culture, we cannot accurately portray or replicate the work. For example, the video below is a performance of Funga Alafia by Nana Malaya. Without the study of the African culture, we would not know this is a welcoming song, because we would not understand the language. We would not know the origin of the dance or dress of the African women with the scarf on their fingers. Without this information, provided by ethnomusicologists, we would not be able to accurately replicate the song in our own culture's classroom.
Funga Alafia
Performers: Nana Malaya and unnamed drummers
Culture of Origin: African often attributed to the Hausa tribes of Nigeria
Instrumentation: Voice
References:
Nettl, Bruno. “The Harmless Drudge: Defining Ethnomusicology.” The Musics of the World, 2005, pp. 3–15.
Reimer, Bennett. A Philosophy of Music Education: Advancing the Vision. Prentice Hall, 2012.
Wade, Bonnie C. Thinking Musically: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Kellie,
ReplyDeleteI would agree that ethnomusicology provides the insight needed to be accurate in the classroom. More importantly, I would argue, ethnomusicology provides cultural understanding that allows us to be more empathetic to other cultures. Not only do we know the reasoning behind the cultural implications of music, but we are given the information to think about how it compares and differs to our lives and how we can uses theses similarities and differences to relate to one another. Is this not the ultimate goal of teaching and learning other cultures customs and traditions?
Wow, Cortney, I could not agree more with you! The concept of ethnomusicology assisting people in relating to other cultures did not cross my mind when I wrote this blog. I firmly believe it is vital to be able to relate to other cultures and realize they struggle with similar if not the same issue we do.
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