Ethnomusicology Scholarship and Teaching - “The Song Is You”: From External to Internal in Ethnomusicological Performance

In this article I examine the developing role performance has played in ethnomusicological research and teaching from the early days of our field until the present. Until well into the 1950s ethnomusicologists primarily concerned themselves with collecting, archiving, and analyzing data. Positivist and objectivist research philosophies, as well as colonialist attitudes (for some) about their human subjects militated against extensive personal apprenticeships and performance involvement in exotic musical cultures. Beginning in the 1950s ethnomusicologists increasingly recognized the utility of such study and performance as research tools. Later, the growing interest in and recognition of researchers’ complicity in ethnographic interpretation led to an interest in traditional musical study, teaching, and performing as virtuous and useful activities in and of themselves. We have ultimately come to acknowledge that, as we present and perform these traditions in new contexts, we also present and perform ourselves.