Music Technology in Ethnomusicology

Abstract

Ethnomusicology has often had an ambivalent relationship with technology: we owe our discipline to mid-twentieth-century developments in recording technology. Nevertheless there is a strong counter-modern streak that characterizes ethnomusicologists as a group. This essay investigates the reasons for ethnomusciologists’ mistrust of certain kinds of music technology and interprets ambivalence as a mode of critical engagement. It surveys turning points in the field from comparative musicology to the critical turn and from the critical turn to the new digital humanities. I conclude that digital humanities needs ethnomusicological ambivalence in the form of critical engagement. Good data analytics needs a skeptical view from the vantage point of music scholars and contextual knowledge-bearers in the cultures of study.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.