SEM through the ages

The mission statement of the January 1956 “Ethno-musicology” newsletter declares that the publication “at present is intended to serve as a vehicle for the exchange of ideas and opinions, news and information among the widely scattered members of our field of study.”  This fledgling periodical was then calling itself a “newsletter” and it had only printed five issues.  In its very early stages, as the journal was trying to find its niche and hammer out its mission, the field of Ethnomusicology as we know it today was at a turning point.

In order to better understand the history of the discipline, I looked at and compared three issues of the journal from different stages in its history.  The earliest “newsletters” were concise, 30-page publications with about 10 pages of text followed by a 20-page bibliography; there were no complete articles, and much of the journal was dedicated to recording the minutes of related meetings.  

The next journal I removed from the shelf was Volume 32, Number 1, from winter 1988; this issue was already markedly different.  Not only had the mission changed to include more relevant language (“all interested persons, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin are encouraged to become members”), but also the sheer size of the journal had increased to more than 150 pages.  Even the title had changed: whereas in 1956 there was a hyphen between Ethno- and musicology, by 1988 the word had been accepted as a whole.  Additionally, the journal was no longer a “newsletter,” but a Journal for the Society of Ethnomusicology, which had not yet been established in January 1956. 

When I pulled out the most recent journal on the shelf (Volume 51, Number 3), I found Kiri’s article on Grand Theft Auto, and it was clear to me that the field had changed a great deal.  I opened to page 402 and began to read, and immediately I spotted reflexivity, even in the first sentence.  Although I did not read the articles in the 2007 issue of the journal in their entirety, the authors seemed to focus as much on the cultures of the people studied as on their music; an article subtitled “Rock, Cosmopolitanism, and the Nation in Trinidad” by Timothy Rommen, and another exploring “Expressivity and Grammar in Vocal Performance” appear with Kiri’s work. 

I turned back to Volume 1, Number 6 and read the list of papers of interest that were presented at the American Anthropological Association that year; the first, by Willard Rhodes, was called “Toward a Definition of Ethnomusicology.”  It seems that defining the discipline will never grow old.  The other three papers, however, seem dated: all seem to focus on the classification and analysis of the music of the world, with very little focus on each music-culture.  I noticed that there were no Americans studying music of the USA in that journal and that there were few, if any, indications of reflexivity. 

The issue from 1988 does indeed show the evolution of the field, as one might expect.  When I read the beginning of Chris Goertzen’s article on Country music in Vienna, I noticed the extreme importance he attributed to his fieldwork, as has always been done, but I also noticed the term “participant-observer,” which indicates reflexivity. 

Ethnomusicology seems to be an ever-evolving field, and only by understanding its history can we hope to continue to progress.