Politics of Ethnomusicological Knowledge Production and Circulation

Author(s): Jocelyne Guilbault

Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2014), pp. 321-326
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology
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Vol. 58, No. 2 Ethnomusicology Spring/Summer 2014

Politics of Ethnomusicological
Knowledge Production and Circulation
Jocelyne Guilbault / University of California, Berkeley

I t has long been recognized, both within the discipline and externally, that
ethnomusicologists focus on interdisciplinarity,1 that we have been inspired
by and borrowed theories and methodologies from several disciplines, includ-
ing not only anthropology, but also linguistics, ethnic studies, cultural studies,
and more recently, cultural geography, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, and visual and
media-technology studies. There is no problem with that. The importance of
interdisciplinarity and its benefits does not have to be defended. Many universi-
ties are trying hard to develop what they call course threadsgroups of courses
focusing on particular themes, issues, or practices across disciplines to encourage
students to develop a deep knowledge about the theme, issue, or problem in
question from various perspectives. The difficulty is that ethnomusicology to a
large extent continues to be viewed by those from many of the disciplines from
which it borrows in the arts, humanities, and social sciences as contributing
little theory of its own.
Looking at publications in anthropology, for example, few if any ethno-
musicologists names and studies are mentioned in their bibliographies. And
even though 20% of the members of the Society for Ethnomusicology who
completed their 2008 membership survey listed cultural studies as part of
their intellectual training, there is a glaring imbalance among the references that
cultural studies publications include. Most of them refer to studies associated
with disciplines in the social sciences and in the humanities with very few, if any,
referring to ethnomusicology. In a 2005 publication entitled Cultural Studies: A
Critical Introduction, Simon During recognizes cultural studies long intimacy
with pop music, but he adds: The disciplines [cultural studies] engagement
... with music does not have the political force that it does with topics such as

2014 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

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322Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 2014

gender, ethnicity, race and sexuality, because these are much more nearly politi-
cal through and through (2005:135; my emphasis). Clearly, as Susan McClary
rightly argued nearly thirty years ago, for some scholars,
Musics history of reception [or it could be suggested, musics history tout court]
parallels that of literature and the visual arts in that it was displaced during the
course of the nineteenth century [and for some scholars, continues to be displaced]
to a separate sphere, replete with pseudo-religious rituals and attitudes. At the very
moment that music was beginning to be produced for a mass bourgeois audience,
that audience sought to legitimize its artifacts by grounding them in the certainty
of another, presumably more absolute, realmrather than in terms of its own social
tastes and values (1987:15).
While there are many researchers in cultural studies and a wide range of
other fields that do recognize how music actively participates in the elaboration
of cultural politicswhether it is in relation to local governmental legislation,
transnational political economy, postcolonial history, ethical issues, or social
valuesthe fact remains that studies associated with ethnomusicology are still
greatly overlooked. Could it be that publications in ethnomusicology have not
been perceived as engaging the social in their studies of musical practices?
Or is this lack of reciprocal exchange with ethnomusicology symptomatic of a
wider problem?
I think that there might be at least two reasons for this neglect of our field.
One is that we have been marginalized and marginalize ourselves by reproduc-
ingwhether it is through Marxist, Romantic, or aesthetist notionsthe idea
that music is an epiphenomenon (i.e., that music is a reflection of society) or
simply a mediation between two or more other entities. A second possible reason
why our insights are not often drawn upon by scholars in other disciplines is that
we need to make the theorizing of the politics we engage withwhether it is in
relation to aesthetics, gender or diaspora politicsmore visible and audible in
our work. The bottom line is that we should ask ourselves, of what use to social
theory is the study of musical practice as much as of what use to the study of
musical practice is social theory.
So I want to take on Harrys theme, Ethnomusicological Contributions to
the Study of Politics and Culture, head on and highlight the kinds of contribu-
tions that ethnomusicologists can bring to critical theory. One first move is not
to think of music and politics as two separate entities but to theorize music as
generating and exercising its own distinct politicsnot merely musical, but
also economic, social, gendered, and so on. Our studies of the plural and distinct
economies that animate musical practices are, in my view, the cornerstones from
which ethnomusicologists can make significant contributions to critical theory.
By the plural and distinct economies of music, I mean the ways in which
specific musics deal with issues, for example, of race and class. By the plural

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 Guilbault: Politics of Ethnomusicological Knowledge323

and distinct economies of music, I mean the ways in which particular musics
manage and normalize specific aesthetics, gendered roles, or sexualized expres-
sions. I am equally referring to the ways in which specific musics target specific
audiences (ethnic groups, age groups, and so forth) and count on particular,
selective circuits in which to travel. All of these represent different kinds of
economiesspheres of management, ways of organizing social relations, and
selections of human and material resources. We have been studying for years
how these different economies in music function and enact distinct politics, that
is, particular values and principles, arts of governing, and activities and tactics
concerned with power, status, and access. Think about the many books that have
earned the Alan Merriam Prize over the years by demonstrating precisely what
Merriam advocated: deeply grounded studies that address not only the music,
per se, but also the ways in which musical performance contributes to social
life, religious knowledge, bodily cognition and control, financial incomes, and
nation-building, to name only a few. It would be futile to try to provide the titles
of these publications, as well as those of the many other studies that have equally
engaged these issues. The point here is that these richly detailed ethnographies
in ethnomusicology have led to new insights derived as much from the musical
practices under study as from the reworking of particular theoretical notions.
These insights have at times extended or refined theories beyond their original
arena of application. The question is, how can such insights generated by eth-
nomusicological studies better circulate?
One of the ways to address this challenge, it could be suggested, is to en-
gage in larger conversations and in a greater number of collaborations. But the
contributions that ethnomusicology can bring to critical theory must first be
clarified in our own work by asking ourselves: In what ways do our studies of
musical values in historically situated musical practices help expand the domi-
nant understandings or theorizations of particular aesthetic formationswhich,
as Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace argues, are never just about the sharing of
aesthetic values but are as much about cultural politics, the fight over who (or
what) can determine the aesthetic values that should be shared.2
In what ways do our studies help reassess the meanings of ethical values,
or of forms of civic accountability in contemporary societies? In what ways do
our studies of the material economies of music, more specifically the sound
technologies we study, help revisit the commonly held notions of tradition and
modernity, or of copyright policy? What do our studies of the circuits in which
musicians travel say about cosmopolitanism, citizenship, and the modern state?
What do our studies of world music or hybrid music add to the notions of
nationalism, space, or democracy? How do our studies of markets and market-
ing enhance our understanding of the shifting global economy? What do our
studies of the circulation of musical products contribute to our understanding of

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324Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 2014

informal economies? Or, what do our studies of touring musicians or diasporic

musical networks add to discourses on mobility or discourses on mediation? Or
finally, how do our studies of the interactions of animal life and human beings
help bring forth new dimensions to eco-musical criticism or to our understand-
ing of compositional processes?
These are some of the ways that we could clarify insights gained from eth-
nomusicological studies concerning issues that matter to scholars from a wide
range of disciplines. There are certainly other ways to do this. But, to be sure, to
make this kind of enquiry central to the ways our research projects are conceived
and written would help us engage a real conversation with political theorists,
those who think deeply about the process of the politicization of public spheres.3
The issue that I mentioned at the beginning of this essay was the lack of reci-
procity between ethnomusicology and other disciplines in the humanities and
social sciences. Could we imagine, and convince others, that it is as productive
to think about music as it is to think about elections, other sectors of industry,
the mediation of labor relations, or exploitative systems for the production of
difference? It is by showing how our ethnomusicological work is as productive a
site to general critical theory as any other that, I believe, our colleagues in other
disciplines will come to think by and through us, as we have come to think by
and through them. How can we help develop or enhance such a reciprocity? I
would like to propose the following possible ventures:
The first ones concern individual initiatives. Through our articles and books,
we could individually work towards producing studies that make clear that music
is materially, socially, and ecologically political, through and through. We could
also organize collaborative projects that assemble scholars with different academic
trainings to address the relationship of music to issues such as poverty, postco-
loniality, or labor, for example. Much work in this direction has already been
undertaken. I am thinking here in particular about two inspiring publications
and milestones. The first one is the book, edited by Ronald Radano and Philip V.
Bohlman, Music and the Racial Imagination, that presents, in the words of Hous-
ton A. Baker, Jr., a sophisticated interventionist theory and poetics of music and
the racial imagination (2000:xii). The second book, Western Music and Its Others:
Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, edited by Georgina Born
and David Hesmondhalgh (2000), could also be described as a major foray into
the cultural studies of global musical difference. More publications like these are
needed to bring together ways that multiple voices and perspectives can address
the place of cultural theory in contemporary music studies.
Other possible ventures to help ethnomusicological studies be part of larger
forums of exchangenot in an attempt to develop a consensus, but to share in-
sights and take them furthercould take the form of institutional interventions.
We could begin to circulate our work as political theorists by creating something

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 Guilbault: Politics of Ethnomusicological Knowledge325

similar to the Annual Review of Anthropology or Annual Review of Sociology.

This would be a site where ethnomusicologists, along with scholars from a wide
range of disciplines, could present in the form of review essays key ideas from
the work they and others have done on music in relation to theoretical ques-
tions of broad relevance. Such essays would certainly represent an important
step toward acknowledging the ways cultural theory has been used, revisited,
and expanded by and through musical findings. In addition, they would also
constitute an important resource for researchers and students alike.4
There are now several interdisciplinary journals in music, including The
International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, the Journal of
Interdisciplinary Music Studies, and Popular Music. However, they primarily
feature case studies or individual contributions on particular issues. The relatively
new interdisciplinary journal VOLUME! also provides an explicit platform or
mechanism of interchange to address selected theoretical issues through music.
Recently, in an e-mail exchange with me, Harry Berger reported that the editors
of Revista Umbral, a journal housed at the University of Puerto Rico, announced
that the theme of the seventh edition of their publication will be devoted to
transdisciplinary dialogue in music research. This issue seeks articles that reflect
on the nature of interdisciplinary music studies (Berger, personal communica-
tion). Clearly, there is a felt-need among scholars to expand or revise some of
the theoretical notions they work with in light of other disciplinary perspectives,
to become more familiar with different methodological approaches, and also,
to develop a broader understanding about the practice they study.
Many ethnomusicologists are already taking part in such exchanges. We
need to make such exchanges more visible and more numerous. But most im-
portantly, we need to make explicit how ethnomusicological research can con-
tribute to theoretical debates through the study of situated musical practices
and cultural politics.

Notes
1.This is certainly a point that has been recognized and repeated since Alan Merriams An-
thropology of Music (1964).
2.For more information on this subject, see Lovelace (1998).
3.In a call for a new approach to ethnomusicology debated by several participants in the Call
and Response section of this journal, Timothy Rice made a remark to which most respondents
agreed (2010:323). He noted how, to this day, there are still too many authors in our field who fail to
make their research questions explicit, and, when they do, they leave unclear their tentative answers
or the general implications of their findings. Along the same lines, one of Rices respondents, Martin
Stokes, added, Theorizing in Rices sensegeneralizing, referring to insights derived from other
disciplinary fields and other regions, citation and refutation of ideas within our own fieldoften gets
postponed (2010:339). Jane Sugarman, for her part, detailed why this may have been the case. Too
often, she wrote, our work is included in area-specific edited volumes or special issues of journals

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326Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 2014

(and thus, presumably, does not encourage us to ask questions of greater purview); it does not link
our analyses to major theoretical writings from outside the discipline; it takes for granted received
theoretical notions instead of expanding them or confronting them with their own thinking or
findings; it is not situated explicitly within one or another of the major paradigms that have deeply
informed work in ethnographic disciplines in recent decades (2010:342). This picture certainly
speaks to some tendencies in the field. However, clearly, ethnomusicological training is changing.
There are an increasing number of ethnomusicologists teaching in anthropology departments
known for their theoretical focus and writingsand an increasing number of ethnomusicologists
participating in publications focusing on particular themes and issues in music journals such as
The World of Music, Ethnomusicology Forum, and MUSICultures, as well as in edited books such
as Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures (Greene and Porcello 2004).
That being said, the challenge still remains: how to make the insights generated from the study of
musical practices recognized outside music-related disciplines and show how it illuminates other
fields of activity.
4.The Oxford Handbooks on Music book series has begun a collection of thematically focused
volumes that contain review essays on music topics. They might also provide one significant outlet
for the project I am referring to.

References
Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh, eds. 2000. Western Music and Its Others: Difference,
Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley: University of California Press.
During, Simon. 2005. Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge.
Greene, Paul. D., and Thomas Porcello, eds. 2004. Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies
in Sonic Cultures. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Lovelace, Earl. 1998. The Emancipation-Jouvay Tradition and the Almost Loss of Pan. The Drama
Review 42(3): 5460.
McClary, Susan. 1987. The Blasphemy of Talking Politics during Bach Year. In Music and Society,
edited by Richard Leppert, 1362. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Merriam, Alan. 1964. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Radano, Ronald, and Philip V. Bohlman. 2000. Music and the Racial Imagination. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Rice, Timothy. 2010. Disciplining Ethnomusicology: A Call for a New Approach. Ethnomusicol-
ogy 54(2):31825.
Stokes, Martin. 2010. Response to Rice. Ethnomusicology 54(2):33940.
Sugarman, Jane. 2010. Response to Rice. Ethnomusicology 54(2):34144.

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