 Ethnomusicology is a branch of Musicology. This discipline developed after World
War II in Western countries with a special emphasis on the inter-disciplinary approach to
music. Like any other academic field which is being created and recreated through
research, writing and teaching of its practitioners, Ethnomusicology also had many
variations in concepts, interpretations and applications.
The discipline Ethnomusicology branched out
of Musicology because of the ardent desire of many Western musicologists to study
non-western music which exist with oral traditions and especially with the tribal and
village communities of the non-western countries. The term Ethnomusicology was introduced
by Jaap Kunst, a Dutch Musicologist in 1950, though the discipline was in existence in the
name of comparative musicology from the late 19th Century. It may be said that from the
publication of the Viennese Scholar Guido Adler, "UMFANG METHODEUND ZID DER
MUSIKWISSENSCHAFT"(1885) the term comparative Musicology was used for the study of
non - western music’s as a separate branch of musicology. The first edition of the
Harvard Dictionary defines Comparative Musicology as the 'study of exotic music' and
"the musical cultures outside the European Tradition".
After World War II, the term comparative
musicology was not favoured by many musicologists and one of them was Jaap Kunst, the
Dutch Ethnomusicologist who argued that, "the term (comparative musicology) is not
entirely satisfactory. However the comparative method is frequently used in other fields
of musicology and studies in this field are often not directly comparative."
Therefore Jaap Kunst introduced the term Ethnomusicology in his little booklet
MUSICOLOGICA in the title page of the book in 1950. He placed the prefix
"Ethno" in front of the word Musicology with a hyphen to indicate that the study
would be on the music of the races of man or ethnic group.
The term was virtually accepted immediately
and a Society for Ethnomusicology was established in 1956 in the United States of America.
The general consensus of the members who framed the society discussed and favoured the
view that "Ethnomusicology is by no means limited to the so called ‘primitive
music’ and is defined more by the orientation of the student than by any rigid
boundaries of discourse." The term Ethnomusicology is more accurate and descriptive
of this discipline and its field of investigation than the older term, comparative
musicology. The hyphen in
 Ethnomusicology was officially dropped by the Society for
Ethnomusicology in 1957. Prof. David Mcallester one of the founders of the Society for
Ethnomusicology emphasise that this new discipline must not be defined by music under
study, but by its methodology.
By the second half of the decade in the
1950s, the term Ethnomusicology came into use with or without hyphen as synonyms and by
the end of the decade, the term comparative musicology reached a status of a historic
term.
The term Ethnomusicology has been defined
by many Ethnomusicologists from time to time changing the connotations of the term. Jaap
Kunst defined the term Ethnomusicology as the study of "the music and musical
instruments of all non-European peoples, including both the so called primitive peoples
and the civilised Eastern Nations". In the third edition of this same book, he wrote
that it is a study of "Traditional Music and Musical Instruments of all cultural
stratas of mankind" but specifically named "Tribal and Folk Music and every kind
of non-western Art Music" specifically excluding Western Art and popular music. This
definition was satisfactory at that period for many Ethnomusicologists. More definitions
for the term Ethnomusicology began to come up from 1960s from various Ethnomusicologists
extending the scope of study wider and wider.
Dr.S.A.K.Durga
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