This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Sounding Decolonial Futures: Decentering Ethnomusicology's Colonialist Legacies

Discipline: Comparative Musicology

The discipline of Comparative Musicology emerged in the late 19th century and was first defined by Guido Adler in 1885 as a method for scientifically understanding music, especially music outside of the European tradition.

To this end, Adler claimed that music must be transcribed into Western notation and that formal aspects of the music (rhythm, tonality, text, instrumentation) be considered so that the music could be classified into types. By classifying music, Adler and other scholars at the time were essentially seeking to turn music into data, and classifying music (or instruments, etc) into types allows for this “data” to be separated, sorted, and analyzed.

At the time that comparative musicology was emerging, theories of cultural evolutionism and diffusionism influenced how the methods of the discipline were formed and executed. Beliefs of cultural evolutionism involved the false narrative of linear cultural evolution and its proponents created a hierarchy of cultures based on how ‘developed’, ‘civilized’, or ‘primitive’ they were according to the standards of those doing the classifying. Musical systems and traditions from around the world were used as evidence for how far along on a linear ‘scale’ of development a certain culture was (Stone 2008: 25). Typically, Western music was at the top of this hierarchy of civilization, and all other cultures were behind on the evolutionary and musical timeline. Theories of diffusionism, adopted from anthropology, pervaded many comparative musicologists’ work, and research was conducted on the origins of certain cultural traits. The diffusion of musical artifacts (certain instruments, scale systems, etc) was used as evidence for cross-cultural interactions (Stone 2008: 28). These theoretical frameworks resulted in two “orientations” of musicology -- historical and systematic (Seeger 1939: 9). Those interested in history used the work of comparative musicology as evidence for a linear timescale of cultural and evolutionary development, and those interested in systematic analysis worked to understand the current state of musical occurrences.

Transcription and observation of scale systems were some of the primary tools used by early comparative musicologists to serve the systemic analysis. First, it was necessary for the comparative analysis to transcribe all music into, as Alder put it, “our” notation if it was not already. The prevalence of different scale systems was used as evidence for a culture’s relative musical and psychological development, as evidence for cultural diffusion, or both. For example, pentatonic, five note, scales were determined to be “less developed” compared to heptatonic, seven note, scale systems, as there were gaps in the pentatonic to be filled in, scholars assumed, as the culture and music of the people developed.

In the United States in the 1950s, scholars began using the term “ethnomusicology” to describe their work and only referred to the previous term of comparative musicology as a reference to the historical work in the field. This shift is significant and reflects many problems in the discipline of comparative musicology. Scholars largely agreed that “comparative” was not an appropriate term to describe the work they were doing nor the direction the discipline should go in, and even that attempting to undergo comparative analysis on subjects not fully understood was “premature and dangerous” (Merriam 1997: 194). These imaginative theories were, at best, inaccurate, and, at worst, violent. However, the renaming of the discipline does not eliminate the problems that plagued comparative musicology, and scholars today still question the purpose of ethnomusicology and ask the discipline: what are we doing? What should we be doing?

Dr. Danielle Brown’s “Open Letter on Racism in Music Studies: Especially Ethnomusicology and Music Education” reveals the many problems pervasive in the academy, instruction, and continued existence of ethnomusicology. First, there is the glaring problem of ethnomusicology empowering white scholars to feel they are experts on musical traditions that they study but are not part of. She also is critical of the “diversity market” and lip-service efforts of change that do nothing to touch the system that makes ethnomusicology a continuation of the colonial project. Though comparative musicology is a thing of the past, at least in name, the problems of the discipline remain, along with new challenges to be reckoned with before “ethnomusicology” (or whatever this discipline should be called) can find itself in the future, or at all.

This entry was written by Katie Galt in the spring of 2022.

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:

This page is referenced by:

Natalie Curtis (1875-1921) 3 An overview of Curtis' life and career, along with an analysis of it's larger impacts and implications. plain 2022-06-08T16:06:16+00:00
Natalie Curtis was born in New York City in either 1875, according to Carl Rahkonen, or 1876, according to historian Michelle Patterson. She came from a “...close, well-connected family and relatively wealthy family…” (Patterson, 2010, 438). She initially trained to be a concert pianist at the National Conservatory in New York, while also traveling abroad to study with well known composers, Feruccio Busoni and Alfred-Auguste Giraudet in Berlin. After returning from Europe to the United States, she went on a trip to Arizona which “...roused her interest in Native American cultures” (Rahkonen 1998:511). Once she returned home to New York, from the Southwest, she decided to change her career course, leaving her family and training for what Curtis calls “...the self appointed task of recording native songs” (1913:623) Patterson states Curtis approached her work with the intent of promoting Native American music and by sharing the value of indigenous people and their culture with white audiences. “Native Americans often used public performances of music as means of engaging with white audiences and conveying ‘Indianness’” (Patterson, 2010, 421)

Curtis conducted her own fieldwork where she would live amongst the Indigenous people she was studying. Rahkonen says Curtis first used a phonograph to record songs but later “...relied on her informants singing a song several times so she could make a faithful transcription” (1998: 513). She also engaged in advocacy work, one example being a personal plea she made to Theodore Roosevelt, a friend of her family, where she was able to end government policy which prohibited the use of native languages and songs in schools on the reservations.

Curtis became a widely acknowledged expert on indigenous music and folklore with the 1907 publication of The Indians' Book, a collection of more than 200 songs from 18 tribes (Rahkonen 1998, 511). The majority of The Indian’s Book was printed with no accompaniment, which had been a standard of Curtis’s publications before as Curtis did her best not to add or alter her transcriptions of songs. Maureen Salzer refers to these transcriptions as “Translations of native verbal art…” and makes the claim that the published texts have a problematic relationship with their original verbal sources and are, in most cases, sufficiently removed from accurate translation of representation to be considered Native” (Salzer, 2010, 79).

Natalie Curtis was definitely influenced by the work of Alice Fletcher and Frances Densmore, who were more well known and well documented. Due to her unexpected death at age 46, Curtis had a much smaller volume of published materials. Like Curtis, Fletcher and Densmore were white women who shared similar experiences when they were first exposed to Indigenous music and felt that it was in some way their calling (Rahkonen 1998, 511).

In her article "The Female Sound Collector and Her Talking Machine," Roshanak Khesti touches on this “fantasy of sound collecting” (2015, 16) and makes the claim that in all these practices of recording or sound collecting Indigenous music, one thing remains the same: the one collecting the sound is a white woman. Khesti describes this as “The ascension of white, female, comparative musicologists in the public sphere as savior to 'disappearing' Native American sounds, along with the attendant power that yielded for her….” (2015, 28). Khesti identifies the problematic nature of these transcription practices, the first being the presence of white saviorism, the idea that Ingenious people need white people's help or “rescue.” Khesti also touches on how a lot of these women were using Indigenous people, music and culture, a place they knew would accept them, for their own gain or career advancement. She identifies the “archetype of the upper class, white, female comparative musicologists spurned by her male university colleagues and banished to “Indian country” to practice her craftsman, a profile that describes many early comparative musicologists.” (Khesti, 2015, 17)

The work of Natalie Curtis, along with her contemporaries, may have been done with the intention of both aiding and advancing Indigenous people and their music but that does not mean these transcription practices did not engage in any harm. When reading these translations with a critical lens, and an informed perspective on colonialism and indigenous survivance, one can identify the way in which “...the published texts have a problematic relationship with their original verbal sources and are, in most cases, sufficiently removed from accurate translation of representation to be considered Native.” (Salzer, 2010, 79)

Bibliography
- Burlin, Natalie Curtis. 1907. “The Indians' book an offering by the American Indians of Indian lore, musical and narrative, to form a record of the songs and legends of their race.” New York: Harper.
- Curtis, Natalie. “A Plea for Our Native Art.” The Musical Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1920): 175–78.
- Curtis, Natalie. "The Perpetuating of Indian Art." The Outlook, 22 October 1913: 623.
- Rahkonen, Carl. “Special Bibliography: Natalie Curtis (1875-1921).” Ethnomusicology 42, no. 3 (1998): 511–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/852852.
- Khesti, Roshanak. 2015. "The female sound collector and her talking machine” Modernity's ear: listening to race and gender in world music. New York: New York University Press. 15-38.
- Patterson, Michelle Wick. “The ‘Pencil in the Hand of the Indian’: Cross-Cultural Interactions in Natalie Curtis’s ‘The Indians’ Book.’” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 9, no. 4 (2010): 419–49.
- Salzer, Maureen. “Native Presence and Survivance in Early Twentieth-Century Translations By Natalie Curtis Burlin And Mary Austin.” Western American Literature 39, no. 1 (2004): 79–103.
What is ethnomusicology?
Ethnomusicology’s meaning is the study of people’s musical practices. In fact, the Greek root of the word, “ethnos”, means people. Ethnomusicology, named as a field by Jaap Kunst in 1950, was born out of many other disciplines and practices such as ethnology, anthropology, sociology, and musicology. Its historical predecessor, comparative musicology, was interested in tracing cultural “development” through music. It is important to emphasize ethnomusicology’s colonial roots, since pioneers, known in terms of their time as ethnologists, not ethnomusicologists, such as Alice Cunningham Fletcher (1838-1923) and Frances Theresa Densmore (1867-1957) exotified the field. This was due to the imbalance of power dynamics, as well as the field methodologies with which they approached their research, which are problematic from today’s standpoint. The invention of the phonograph enabled these early collectors to record and subsequently disseminate these musics for scholarly purposes, such as research and analysis. These pioneers were interested in “saving” Indigenous cultures by recording and archiving their songs in large institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, and other academic and governmental institutions. This practice is often called “salvage ethnography.”
This early ethnological work took place alongside another field that was concurrently emerging: comparative musicology. Its main objective was to analyze “world music” or indigenous musical practices in comparison to classical European music. Transcriptions, labeling of recorded materials, and the exotification of the “unknown” were all embedded in such practices.
As I previously mentioned, the development of technology and the innovations of the time, such as the phonograph and the gramophone, mobilized early ethnographers. These technologies allowed them to record sounds and music during their field work. One may wonder what the word “field” means in reference to this context. The “field” is a specific space (such as: country, community, institutions, and the internet) where ethnomusicologists conduct their research. Contemporary ethnomusicologists have all sorts of tasks. They are able to work with the current musical scenes in different places around the world, archive music that should be preserved, and work with people who might not have the exposure and attention that they deserve musically. Note taking, recording, engaging, observing, and the gathering of oral histories are some of the tools that enable ethnomusicologists to contextualize their research, which are often presented in the form of published ethnographies.
Contemporary ethnomusicologists are now pushing the boundaries of this field of study and focusing on collaboration, decentering knowledge, and the application of this knowledge to promote social justice and community engagement. Music is a way of portraying identity, expressing personal feelings and emotions but it can also be a form of political expression and activism. Rather than focusing on research and knowledge, contemporary ethnomusicologists are moving towards innovative ways of collaborating with different communities with the end goal of promoting social justice. This approach blurs the lines between the “subjects” and the “researcher,” allowing the ethnomusicologists and the communities with whom they work to work together towards a common goal. Such collaborations may include the repatriation of materials, various forms of community music, decentering colonial concepts and public information that may be far from the truth, and creating new ways for communities to expose their music in conservatories and around the world, and celebrate their cultural heritage. All of these efforts and collaborations may build towards what one may call a decolonial future.

This page has paths:

This page is referenced by:

This page references: