Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

ShakuhachiSarah wrote:

What do you guys think - how can we change the name "ethnomusicology" to not make it sound so colonialist/"racist"/limiting.

Hi Sarah
I think it's strange that some people seem to feel this is racist or politically incorrect. Much of the politically incorrect thing seems quite bizarre to me and seems as if it is based on some kind of paranoia of being sued! Why can't we call black black, white white, fat fat and thin thin? These things exist. And different ethnic groups (or ethnoi as Lev Gumilev refers to them) also exist. And they are different. This is just reality so it would seem strange or even unnecessarily misleading to change our language in a pretense that everything is the same, that differences do not exist.

I guess what I associate with when I hear the term "ethnic music" may be a music somehow unique to an ethnos, more so than some broader multi-ethnic musics such as the European classical music or modern global musics (although of course the distinction is blurred). So I would definitely think of the traditional shakuhachi music (sankyoku and honkyoku) as being ethnically Japanese. Sure there are some distant roots and influences from China 1000 years ago or so but I assume that the sankyoku and honkyoku were composed here in Japan quite a time after the musical fusion had more or less settled down.

As for the modern shakuhachi music (Meiji period to present), that's another story.

radi0gnome wrote:

Justin wrote:

I think it's strange that some people seem to feel this is racist or politically incorrect. Much of the politically incorrect thing seems quite bizarre to me and seems as if it is based on some kind of paranoia of being sued!

I can see where they are coming from. Every kind of music associated with any culture that is not Western-European is being labeled "ethnic". You'd think that Western-European music should be "ethnic" music too from a non-Western-European perspective. But it's not thought of that way, and the label "ethnic" being used the way it is hides the fact that Western-European music is ethnic too. That is a very biased usage of the term.

You are forgetting that Western European music can also be refered to as ethnic music, such as Scotish or Irish music. Dun from Holland was talking about this already:

Dun Romin wrote:

In my Western European ears this sounds very funny guys!
We consider etnic music, music that originates from the various cultures there are in Europe. Some also call it 'folk' music in the sense of folkloristic music. So you have Slavian music, Portugese (fado), Irish, Scandinavian, Russian, Greek, Italian. All etnic music. Even in my small country there is etnic music.

So it doesn't seem to refer to only non-European music. But even if it did refer to all ethnoi except that of the people using the term, that wouldn't be so unnatural anyway would it? Otherwise you're going to start saying we can't use terms like "foreigner" or "exotic".

ShakuhachiSarah wrote:

Hey I love what you said at the end "changing a name is nothing more then starting to wear sunglasses with a different colour of glass." Good point!!!

Words are used to share ideas and concepts.
Words are used to control humans, ideas and concepts.
Words are a tool.
Words fail me.
Sounds and music are universal.





Random thoughts of a dyslexic Experimentalist   

Wow! Everyone has really great comments and it is refreshing to see many different point of views.

Justin - I felt the same way at first and there are moments where I thought the word was fine, but, it was actually my nephew who kind of made me see the problems with the term. When I told my nephew that I was going to graduate school for ethnomusicology he said very simply "so, what is ethnic music," and I couldn't answer the question. I thought to myself "What IS ethnic music?" because in a sense all music can be labeled "ethnic".

Radiognome - You bring up so many good points, especially the "self-centric" aspect. This may make you laugh but the "ethno" people (one way I like to refer to ethnomusicologists, or I also like the more comedic the "ethnoits") refer to self-centric as "ethnocentric" and being  "ethnocentric" is a no no for the "ethnomusicologist".

Dust - Great stuff! Universals is another big topic among us "ethnoits". If your interested read Leonard B. Meyer's article "Universalsim and Relativism in the Study of Ethnic Music" - 1) The title isn't a pun on our discussion, it was written in 1960 2) I think it is available on google scholar - if not I have PDF I can email you or anyone who is interested.

To me all music is ethnic or it's all not ethnic.

Question: When am I playing ethnic music, when I play punk rock or when I play Japanese music?

Punk rock is the music of my ethnic and cultural group. But it developed from black music within a space of only about 20 years.

Japanese music is ethnic (maybe) but it's not my ethnic group. So what happens when I play it?

I don't get these terms. To me it's all the same because it's coming out of me.

OMG! (no pun intended) I have to tell my teachers that!

Hi, Sarah.

Will you be sharing your thesis papers here when complete? Sounds like good reading.

Tairaku wrote:

The simple act of dividing music into what is perceived as "ethno" vs. what is apparently not affects the outcome. Because you're deciding the outcome before you even listen to the music. How do you decide? A few decades ago there might have been isolated pockets of "ethno" music here and there but now there is no difference between ethno and non-ethno music.

The fact that there are many non-Japanese people on this forum who can play Japanese music proves that there is no such thing as "ethnomusicology".

Well, 'ethnomusicology' exists because we are stuck with the term - unfortunately. In Danish the study is called music-ethnology and even though the word ethnology and ethnic are related we have to separate them when discussing the term 'ethnomusicology' as there seem to be a misunderstanding here.

As Sarah already mentioned ethnomusicology was called comparative musicology. The term Ethnomusicology was introduced by Jaap Kunst, a Dutch Musicologist in 1950 when the serious study of music was still ONLY the study of Western classical music!

Note the the term used is: Western CLASSICAL music!

That is why music such as Irish and Slavic folk music - already mentioned here has been a subject of study in ethnomusicology from relatively early on in the history of ethnomusicology. It was separated for some time as a subject within the study of folklore in the early days.

The attitude was that serious study of music or the only music worth of serious study was only Western classical - and therefore non-Western classical music was only studied to compare with WCM (Western classical music). In other words: Non WCM was studied so we could really see HOW far in perfection WCM had come.

The 'ethno' in reality comes from ethnology which means that you study the music of any human group. That was what Jaap Kunst imagined. He wanted to make non-WCM also worth a study without it being compared to anything.

Today ethnomusicology is a branch of musicology that studies all music with an anthropological approach - also WCM can be studied with an ethnomusicological angle.
Ethnomusicology is also in its term very closely related to ethnography. Ethnography is the study of humans in the culture they live in and the approach is that people (or the music of a people) is best understood in a holistic study of their culture.
However, as Tairaku says:

Tairaku wrote:

There are no musicians who are isolated anymore. Everybody just plays whatever they want to, they don't play based on race or ethnicity. Even if they play music associated with their ancestors, that's a choice, not because it's their only option. All music nowadays is a fusion of commercial and non-commercial and from various ethnic sources.

So to me terms like "world music" and "ethnomusicology" are meaningless.

And you are absolutely right. And that is why replacing etho with ethnography wouldn't work either. Music in its own 'culture' has become a very diffuse concept.
Today we - hopefully all - know that that even WCM has been influenced by many musics from around the world and there is no such thing as a 'pure' tradition - despite that is what we have thought until recently. Ethnomusicologists included, who tried to notate or record 'pure' musics of people before it got corrupted through the contact with other musics.

The prefix 'ethno' is incriminating - yes! And it ought to be changed to musicology in my opinion. The study musicology should be the study of ALL music including popular music, folk music and classical music of ALL cultures and all combinations/crossing of boundaries etc. But we can't get rid of the ethno.... history makes the two disciplines not be able to merge without one swallowing the other. In most universities there will be one or two ethnomusicologists teaching 'world music' - still a bit apart from the 'real' musicologists who study and teach WCM. So it is still very real out there - not only the discrimination against the music other than WCM but also the people who specialise in non-WCM.
I was lucky to study ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London where the department of music only consists of ethnomusicologists - most of them with a background in WCM or Western popular music - who also had a love for music of other parts of the world in which they have specialised.

But please do not confuse the 'ethno' in ethnomusicology as meaning ethnic. It is a shortening of ethnology. That may unfortunately not help it still being a bad term for a study of all musics.... but it is not as bad as the loose and quite unconsicous use of the world ethnicity/ethnic that we see too often!

Last edited by Kiku Day (2010-03-29 04:28:45)

For the non-Dutch/German speaking: 'Jaap Kunst' translates as 'Jacob Art'.

Thanks Kiku for explaining more clearly what I tryed to tell earlier.

  Thanks for the translation, Dun Romin,  he couldn't have had a more perfect name for his profession.   Being of Chinese descent, I couldn't imagine growing up with his name here in America. 

Last edited by mrwuwu (2010-03-29 22:31:07)