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CITY: Champaigne
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COUNTRY: United States
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PERSONAL
Born March 14, 1930, in Prague, Czechoslovakia; died January 14, 2020; became naturalized U.S. citizen, 1945; son of Paul (a musicologist) and Gertrud (a musician) Nettl; married Wanda Maria White, September 15, 1952; children: Rebecca, Gloria.
EDUCATION:Indiana University, A.B., 1950, M.A., Ph.D., 1953; University of Michigan, M.A.L.S., 1960.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, ethnomusicologist, and academic. Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, teacher of musicology and music librarian, 1953-64; University of Illinois, Urbana, associate professor of music, 1964-67, professor of music and anthropology, 1967-2011, professor emeritus, 2011-20. University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany, visiting lecturer in musicology, 1956-58; American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow.
AVOCATIONS:Low-stakes poker games.
AWARDS:Fumio Koizumi Prize for ethnomusicology; Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecturer, American Council of Learned Societies, 2014.
WRITINGS
Contributor to musicology and anthropology journals. Editor, Ethnomusicology, 1962-66; editor, Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, beginning 1975.
SIDELIGHTS
Bruno Nettl was an American ethnomusicologist and academic. Born in 1930 in Prague, he fled to the United States during World War II and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Nettl earned a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1953 and published his first book, Music in Primitive Culture, a few years later. He began lecturing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1964, becoming a professor emeritus in 2011. Throughout his career, he conducted research among the Blackfoot of Montana, as well as in Iran, Israel, and southern India. His research interests encompass ethnomusicological theory and method; the study of improvisatory music; and the understanding of musical change around the world. He has published more than 100 articles in academic journals and numerous books, including The Western Impact on World Music, Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives, Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Perspectives on Schools of Music, Encounters in Ethnomusicology, and Nettl’s Elephant: On the History of Ethnomusicology.
In 2015 Nettl published the third edition of The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three Discussions. This edition serves as an updated version of The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts, which he published in 1983. The account offers thirty-three discussion across four sections that encompass the history of the field of ethnomusicology. Nettl explores how the field has evolved over the years, and this updated version takes into account Nettl’s own change of view on various issues central to the field of study.
Writing in Choice, R. Knight commented that “Nettl covers all the issues, concepts, and controversies of the now well-established field as only he can.” In a review in Notes, Jean Ngoya Kidula referred to it as “an amazing repository of information.” Kidula noted that “Nettl’s third Study is, in my opinion, an improvement on the previous works, not so much in terms of style as much as in the presence of ‘ripeness,’ or ‘maturity’ in the manner of finely-aged wine.”
Kidula offered some criticism as well in her review in Notes. “There are a few confusing moments. In the first chapter, it appears that Nettl will acknowledge ethnomusicology as a study of all music, but he backtracks quite early and relegates the discipline to a study of ‘non-Western and folk music’ (p. 10). That ambivalence is reinforced in his second chapter’s (somewhat unsuccessful) struggle to define music as something beyond sound and structures, only to provide a whole section devoted to music ‘as sound and structures.’”
Nevertheless, Kidula concluded that “overall, the text provides an excellent historical account of the discipline: its issues, concepts, ideas, methods, terminology, and seminal (and other) scholars. It foregrounds the tremendous wisdom, knowledge, and understanding of the field that Nettl has accumulated while navigating the vast terrains of ethnomusicology in the United States. The text is accessible to undergraduates and graduate students, introducing concepts, issues, scholars, methods, and findings in the field in a compact yet approachable way.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, November 1, 2015, R. Knight, review of The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-three Discussions, p. 426.
Notes, 2016, Jean Ngoya Kidula, review of The Study of Ethnomusicology, p. 128.
ONLINE
School of Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign website, https://music.illinois.edu/ (March 18, 2020), author profile.
OBITUARIES
Slipped Disc, https://slippedisc.com/ (January 16, 2020), Norman Lebrecht, “Death of the Last True Musicologist.”
Sunset Funeral Homes & Memorial Park website, https://www.sunsetfuneralhome.com/ (January 15, 2020), “Bruno Nettl.”
Bruno Nettl
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Bruno Nettl (14 March 1930 – 15 January 2020) was an ethnomusicologist and musicologist.
Bruno Nettl was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1930, moved to United States in 1939, studied at Indiana University with George Herzog[1] and the University of Michigan, and taught from 1964 at the University of Illinois, where he eventually was named Professor Emeritus of Music and Anthropology. He continued to teach part-time until his death. Active principally in the field of ethnomusicology, he did field research with Native American peoples (1960s and 1980s, see Blackfoot music), in Iran (1966, 1968–69, 1972, 1974), and in South India (1981–2). He served as president of the Society for Ethnomusicology and as editor of its journal, Ethnomusicology. Nettl held honorary doctorates from the University of Illinois, Carleton College, Kenyon College, and the University of Chicago. He was a recipient of the Fumio Koizumi Prize for ethnomusicology, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nettl was named the 2014 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecturer by the American Council of Learned Societies. In the course of his long career as a scholar and as a professor, he was the teacher of many of the most visible ethnomusicologists active today in the international scene like, among many others, Philip Bohlman, Chris Waterman, Marcello Sorce Keller [it], and Victoria Lindsay Levine. The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music holds the Bruno Nettl Papers, 1966–1988, which consists of administrative and personal correspondence while Nettl was a professor and head of the Musicology Division for the University of Illinois School of Music.
Contents
1 Bibliography
2 References
3 Further reading
4 External links
Bibliography
(1956). Music in Primitive Culture. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-59000-7.
(1960). Cheremis Musical Styles. Indiana University Press
(1964). Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology. The Free Press of Glencoe.
(1965/1989). Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Prentice-Hall, Inc. ISBN 0-13-323247-6.
(1976). Folk Music In The U.S. An Introduction. WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
(1977). Daramad of Chahargah : a study in the performance practice of Persian music. Detroit : Information Coordinators.
(1978). Eight Urban Musical Cultures. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
(1989). Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives. Ohio: The Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-370-2.
(1983/2005). The Study of Ethnomusicology. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-03033-8.
(1991). Comparative Musicology And Anthropology Of Music. (with Philip V. Bohlman) University of Chicago Press.
(1995). Heartland Excursions. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02135-5
(1995). Music, Culture, & Experience. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS.
(1996). Excursions In World Music. PRENTICE HALL
(1996). Musica Folklorica Y Tradicional En Los Continentes ALIANZA
(1997). Africa in GARLAND PUBLISHING
(1998). South America, Mexico, Central America And The Car
(1998). In The Course Of Performance. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
(1999). Europe in GARLAND ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD MUSIC, V. 8
(2005). Study Of Ethnomusicology UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
(2010). Nettl's Elephant UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
(2013). Becoming an Ethnomusicologist: A Miscellany of Influences. The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-8697-9.
January 15, 2020
Remembering Bruno Nettl
News Categories:
emeritus faculty
ethnomusicology
Update: a concert in honor of Professor Bruno Nettl has been scheduled for May 10, 2020 at 2:00 PM in the Great Hall. All are welcome.
Dear friends,
It is with great sadness that I inform you that our colleague Professor Emeritus Bruno Nettl passed away last night after a short illness. Even in my brief time here, I was deeply touched by the warm welcome he gave me, and we had begun to develop a wonderful friendship over the course of the numerous lunches and meetings we had together. I am sorry that process was cut short, but grateful that I had the opportunity to get to know such a phenomenal scholar and human being. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.
To describe Bruno as a giant in the field of ethnomusicology hardly does him justice. His work was seminal in establishing the discipline in the United States, both through his research and via the army of ethnomusicologists he has trained over the years. In addition to having authored or co-authored literally hundreds of articles, Bruno served as a visiting faculty member at dozens of institutions around the globe and as an editor for numerous journals, and he was awarded a great many accolades, including several honorary degrees and honorary memberships in scholarly organizations. Most recently, Bruno published some reflections on his 1995 book, Heartland Excursions, in the latest edition of Sonorities. He was also particularly proud of the book his daughter Gloria assembled that features his wife Wanda’s art.
To close, I’d like to quote from Philip Bohlman’s article on Bruno in the Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians (he is one of very few scholars to be so featured during his actual lifetime): “Nettl’s influence on modern musical scholarship crosses disciplinary as well as international borders. He has encouraged rapprochement and cooperation among all domains of musical scholarship, and has strengthened the interdisciplinary potential of ethnomusicology by drawing from folklore studies, anthropology and the social sciences. The influences of his approaches to world music are also evident in his activities as a teacher, which embrace all levels of music education, and appear in his articles and classroom textbooks, as well as the characteristically lucid quality of all his published work. Many leading ethnomusicologists have studied with Nettl and written dissertations advised by him. It has been the greatest measure of his intellectual breadth and diversity that his former students have not formed a single school, but have established new directions both for ethnomusicology and modern musical scholarship generally.”
Bruno requested that no funeral service be held, but there will be a celebration of his life at a later date.
Sincerely,
Jeff Sposato
Professor and Director
School of Music
Bruno Nettl
Professor Emeritus of Musicology
EMAIL
b-nettl@illinois.edu
A.B. (music), M.A., Indiana University; M.A. (library science), University of Michigan; Ph.D. (musicology, ethnomusicology, with minors in anthropology and folklore), Indiana University
Bruno Nettl's main research interests are ethnomusicological theory and method, music of Native American cultures, and music of the Middle East, especially Iran. Professor Nettl has done field work with the Blackfoot people of Montana, and in Iran, Israel, and India, and he has an interest in the music history and folk music of his native Czech Republic. Professor Nettl has been focusing in recent years on the study of improvisatory music, the understanding of musical change throughout the world, and the intellectual history of ethnomusicology. He has published many articles and more than a dozen books, the best known being The Study of Ethnomusicology(1983), The Western Impact on World Music (1985), Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives (1989), Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Perspectives on Schools of Music (1995), and Encounters in Ethnomusicology (2002), a professional memoir. Certain of his books have been translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Persian. Professor Nettl has received honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, Carleton College, and Kenyon College. He is an honorary member of the American Musicological Society and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Nettl has taught as visiting professor at Harvard, Northwestern, the universities of Chicago, Minnesota, Washington, and Texas, among others, and served as Benedict Distinguished Professor of Music at Carleton College. Most recently, he has published an edited collection (with coeditor Gabriel Solis), Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society (2009), and is the author of Nettl's Elephant: On the History of Ethnomusicology (2010). He continues teaching part-time in the University of Illinois School of Music.
Bruno Nettl
January 15, 2020
Obituary & ServicesTribute Wall
OBITUARY
Bruno Nettl, 89, of Champaign, beloved husband, father, grandfather, scholar, teacher, and mentor to students and colleagues around the world, passed away on January 15, 2020. Nettl was a musicologist and anthropologist who specialized in the field ethnomusicology, which he taught at the University of Illinois from 1964 to 2011. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on March 14, 1930. His parents, Paul Nettl, a distinguished music historian and Gertrude (nee Hutter) Nettl, a pianist and piano teacher, both of Jewish background, had to leave Europe to escape the Nazis, and settled first in Princeton, New Jersey. To escape the Holocaust, other members of his family immigrated to Australia, Israel, England, and India; but many of his other relatives perished in the camps.
Bruno Nettl's family became U.S. citizens in 1945. He attended schools in Princeton and in Bloomington, Indiana, becoming a student at Indiana University and receiving a PhD there in 1953. He later also studied librarianship at the University of Michigan. From 1953 to 1964 he was on the faculty of Wayne State University, then moving to Champaign-Urbana, where he served on the faculty until 1992, continuing his teaching and research part-time for several more years. With his family, he spent two years teaching at the University of Kiel, Germany, a year doing field research in Tehran, Iran, and a half-year in Madras (now Chennai), India. He was fascinated by the diversity of the world's musics, taught to make them known, and developed theories to account for the musical behavior of the world's cultures.
While a student at Indiana University, he met the love of his life, the former Wanda Maria White, an art student from Columbus, Indiana, and they married in 1952. She survives. They had two children, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol (Stephen Fiol) and Gloria Roubal (Peter Roubal), both of Champaign, and grandchildren Natalie Fiol (of Champaign), Shareen Vogel (of Eugene, Oregon) and Stefan Fiol (of Cincinnati, Ohio), as well as great-grandchildren Louis and Elian Vogel, Amaya Fiol, and Olykai Brownridge-Fiol. Also surviving are stepbrother Robert von Gutfeld, of New York City and stepsister Gabrielle Rosenfeld of Los Angeles, and a cousin, Lotte Mulligan, of Melbourne, Australia, as well as other relatives in Brisbane, Australia, and in Velp, Netherlands.
Nettl was a devoted scholar who did field research among the Blackfoot people of Montana, in Iran, and in Southern India. He was one of a small number of people who established the then new field of ethnomusicology in American universities, and he was the author or co-author of over 100 scholarly articles and over twenty books, the best known of which were "The Study of Ethnomusicology" (3rd edition 2015), "Heartland Excursions" (1995—an anthropological analysis of university schools of music), and "Nettl's Elephant" (2010, essays on the history of his field)—all published by the University of Illinois Press. He was one of the founders of the Society for Ethnomusicology, served as its president and as editor of its journal. He was widely recognized for his accomplishments, receiving honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, Carleton College, and Kenyon College. At the University of Illinois, he was a "Senior University Scholar" (1987–90), he was appointed twice an associate of the Center for Advanced Study, and served as chair of the Division of Musicology in the School of Music for twelve years. In 1986, his Alma Mater, Indiana University, awarded him the title "Distinguished Alumnus," and he was the recipient of the Koizumi Prize, given annually to one of the world's outstanding ethnomusicologists, and he was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
An enthusiastic teacher, Dr. Nettl introduced the field of ethnomusicology at Illinois and built a program that eventually was served by a half dozen faculty, considered one of the national leaders. He taught courses on world music, Native American music, music of the Middle East, folk music, musical improvisation, and the music of his homeland in the Czech Republic. He was the advisor of over forty dissertations, and he was inordinately proud of the achievements of his students, some of whom became distinguished authors and teachers at institutions such as Harvard, UCLA, the Universities of Chicago, Texas, and Washington. Nettl also held visiting professorships and titled chairs at a number of institutions, including Harvard, the Universities of Chicago, Washington, and Louisville, Colorado College and Carleton College. Late in life he resumed contact with scholars in his original home, and taught at Charles University of Prague, Czech Republic, where his father had taught about seventy years earlier. In 2013 he published a book titled "Becoming an Ethnomusicologist" which has lengthy essays about people by whom he was influenced, significantly including his parents.
Bruno Nettl was a person of few hobbies. He was greatly devoted to the members of his family, enjoying frequent gatherings, and encouraging their careers as professionals in the arts. He considered it a special blessing that his daughters, with their families, remain living in Champaign. He enjoyed going to concerts and operas, played in low-stakes poker games, and did a bit of baking and preparation of sweets, particularly marzipan, with his wife Wanda. He liked to write humorous verses for friends and family, for birthdays and holiday occasions, and for his eightieth birthday he published an anthology of these titled "Perverse at Eighty." Together with his wife, Wanda, he was for decades an addict of the New York Times crossword puzzles. He often said that he felt that he had been, throughout his life, extraordinarily fortunate.
A memorial concert and celebration of life will be held at a later date. Those who would like to honor Bruno Nettl’s memory with a gift may consider a donation to one of the Nettl funds that are in place at the University of Illinois. To view these, go to giving.illinois.edu and type “Nettl” into the search field near the bottom of that page. Donations in honor of Bruno Nettl may also be mailed to the University of Illinois School of Music at School of Music Advancement, 1114 West Nevada St. Urbana, IL 61801. Checks should be made out to the University of Illinois Foundation. Be sure to include the fund you choose or Bruno Nettl’s name in the memo of such donations.
The family has entrusted Sunset Funeral Home and Cremation Center in Champaign, Illinois 710 N Neil St. Champaign, Ilinois 61820 with arrangements
Please join his family in sharing photos, videos and memories on his tribute wall at www.sunsetfuneralhome.com
DEATH OF THE LAST TRUE MUSICOLOGIST
By Norman Lebrecht
On January 16, 2020
The Czech-born ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl died yesterday at 89.
A child refugee from Hitler, he taught at the University of Illinois and conducted research among Native Americans, and in Iran and South India.
His first book was published by Harvard in 1956. Its title, Music in Primitive Culture, would have got him deplatformed today.
Nettl pursued his discipline oblivious to fad and fashion.
He enjoyed a 65-year marriage to Wanda and enriched the minds of thousands of pupils.
Nettl, Bruno. The study of ethnomusicology: thirty-three discus sions. 3rd ed. Illinois, 2015. 560p bibl index afp ISBN 9780252039287 cloth, $95.00; ISBN 9780252080821 pbk, $30.00
[cc] 53-1187
ML3798
2014-43248 CIP
Anyone who has ever opened a book to study music will be fascinated with this latest from the indefatigable Bruno Nettl (emer., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), who is well known in the field of ethnomusicology and beyond. He is among the best scholarly wordsmiths out there, and even though this book is 560 pages long, the stream of historical, analytical, and philosophical content never gets boring. This is because Nettl writes in a friendly style, as if readers were visiting with him. This third edition (1st ed., CH, Sep'83) was updated throughout (bibliography included) to account for recent developments and changes in Nettl's own thinking. The book includes no photographs and no musical examples, but it is so peppered with humorous anecdotes and poignant events--all filled with meaning--that nothing more is needed. The scope of this book is from the beginning of ethnomusicology to the present; Nettl covers all the issues, concepts, and controversies of the now well-established field as only he can. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.--R. Knight, emeritus, Oberlin College
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
Knight, R. "Nettl, Bruno. The study of ethnomusicology: thirty-three discussions." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, vol. 53, no. 3, Nov. 2015, p. 426. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A434319523/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e31c59ac. Accessed 7 Mar. 2020.
The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three Discussions. By Bruno Nettl. 3d ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. [xiii, 560 p. ISBN 9780252039287 (hardcover), $95; ISBN 9780252080821 (paperback), $30; ISBN 9780252097331 (e-book), various.] Bibliography, index.
Bruno Nettl's The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three Discussions (2015) is a revised edition of The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-One Issues and Concepts (2005), which was an updated version of his 1983 The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts. Popularly known as "The Red Book," the text has thirty-three essays that Nettl no longer refers to as concepts and issues, but rather as discussions. This edition is substantively revised, presenting closely-and well-edited versions of previously presented chapters with updates to reflect recent developments and concerns in the field. Most chapters are refashioned from the previous edition; a few have entirely new information. The Study, regardless of the edition, is a standard introductory text in many ethnomusicology courses on the history and development of the discipline. It is an amazing repository of information recounted from texts and other sources, as well as from Nettl's own work and personal interpretations of events, relationships, ideas, directions, and experiences over the course of the history of the discipline.
Nettl's third excursion in The Study of Ethnomusicology divides the manuscript into six parts. The first five parts are revised, reworked, updated, and reorganized from the previous edition's four parts. The sixth part has new materials. While the number of chapters in each section is unevenly distributed. they hold together well in their units: Part I has three chapters, Parts II, III, and V have six chapters each, Part IV has seven, and Part VI has five chapters. As in previous editions and in line with the book's tide, each chapter has a subtitle that more explicitly conveys the topic under consideration. In each chapter, Nettl includes a historical trajectory of the subject matter with expanded literature that reflects continuing discussions from newer literature or previously-unknown older texts. This, of course, has resulted in a more extensive bibliography. Further, in each chapter Nettl introduces concepts and terms that have defined the field, whether they were borrowed from other disciplines or invented by ethnomusicologists. In this way, one can imbibe the discipline's linguistic protocol almost seamlessly.
Part I, titled "Contemplating the Musics of the World," revisits and collates perennial discussions about how to delineate the field and the definition of music itself, as well as debates and understanding of universals and specificities of music and its study. His provocative opening line states that ethnomusicology may have arrived into polite society in 2013 due to its inclusion in a New York Times crossword puzzle (p. 3). This sets up an account of scholars who have offered definitions of the term ethnomusicology and the discipline, and credits the first use of the word "etnomusikologia" to a Ukrainian folklorist and scholar Kliment Kvitka in 1928, according to Bohdan Lukaniak (p. 7). Nettl rehashes some of his previous opinions on these definitions and how they determine who ethnomusicologists are and what they do, and also revisits and revises his take on die discipline's "Credo" and how it has shaped or been shaped by the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM). Chapter 2 is an update of the previous editions' discussions of what "music is," leading into Nettl's exploration, in chapter 3, of concepts about the universality of, or commonalities within, music, with expanded ideas on origins (which seems to have been an obsession for scholars through much of the twentieth century).
"As Sounds and Structures," Part II, examines how music is created (chapter 4), what makes music distinctive and/or distinguishes one music culture from another (chapter 5), and rehashes debates on notation and transcription (chapter 6) in order to discuss how data is collated so as to distill its particular characteristics: issues that generate dialogues about universals versus culturally-specific features of repertory (chapter 7). Chapter 8 deals with what solidifies a piece of music to give it a particular identity, featuring a catalog of collectors of folk tunes beginning in the nineteenth century and describing how their data sub-sequently led to comparative studies (chapter 9).
Fieldwork used to be the method that most distinguished ethnomusicology from what was generically known as musicology. Nettl devotes Part III to a discussion of issues, concepts, scholars, musicians, and teachers/consultants that have conventionally been considered seminal to this method and methodology. While much of the material is revised from the previous edition, he includes recent developments such as ethical issues and popular music studies.
Part IV, "In Human Culture," succinctly establishes ethnomusicology's beginnings and affiliation with anthropology. Nettl's introduction in chapter 16 is informed by the SEM's Web site description regarding how the concept of culture aligns with what ethnomusicologists believe themselves to be involved in. As usual, Nettl provides a historical overview of how this relationship (with anthropology) was formerly conceived and described by various scholars vital to the field. He then explores, in chapter 17, issues in writing ethnographies, problematizes "uses and functions" as the terms have interrogated and informed fieldwork; investigates data analysis, interpretation, and reportage (chapter 18); examines the notion of "change" and how it has limited or expanded research and scholarship (chapter 19); and speaks on transmission of musical and related cultural phenomena in the process of establishing, demystifying or abandoning traditions (chapter 20). Nettl then grapples with semiotics and questions of meaning and interpretation (chapter 21), and finally looks at the determinants of musical style, particularly with regard to world music.
"In All of its Varieties" (Part V), revisits theoretical and positional concepts such as diffusion and its role in categorizing music cultures (chapter 23); classifications, taxonomies, and related ideas (chapter 24); instruments (chapter 25); how these concepts and elements are disseminated, particularly regarding the approach of the dominant academic music canon compared with what happens to more marginalized musics, and how these repertories are introduced into the American educational system. The resulting discussion is about whether what exists is a multimusical culture or multicultural musics (pp. 385-88). Nettl includes, in this section, discussion of other developments from the second half of the twentieth century, such as women's music/women in music (chapter 27), that lead into an acknowledgement (in chapter 28) of the expanding diversity of voices that are the hallmark of contemporary academia.
Part VI, "From a Broad Perspective," highlights new developments and ideas that either emerged in the twenty-first century or were reconstituted to reflect contemporary concerns. These include the growing popularity of "applied ethnomusicology" (chapter 29) in its various definitions and adaptations by music societies such as SEM and the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM), in academic institutions (through such ideas as service-learning), by subgroups (such as those involved in medical ethnomusicology), and by individuals who became advocates for the communities they studied (eg., Anthony Seeger and the Suya). The discussion also involves issues of representation and environmental (musical) preservation, including recent efforts at repatriation. Nettl further dissects ethnomusicology's relationship to and with musicology, anthropology, and the less-examined area of dance studies, particularly in the academy and in scholarly writing. While he concludes that ethnomusicology has impacted musicology, it seems the discipline has adopted ideas and trends from anthropology but the reverse is not true (p. 448). However, while there is a symbiotic relationship with dance, ethnomusicologists know less about or engage less with dance, while dance scholars know more about music (pp. 451-52).
Chapters 31 and 32 are unique in that Nettl provides personal disclosures about areas where he maintained his positions over the years, and when he has changed his ideas or beliefs about music and scholarship. as well as issues, concepts, events, texts, moments, and ideas that inform ethnomusicology as a discipline. In the last chapter, Nettl attempts to provide a snapshot of what has transpired in this new century and predicts the usefulness and contributions of ethnomusicology to society in general and scholarship in particular.
Nettl's third Study is, in my opinion, an improvement on the previous works, not so much in terms of style as much as in the presence of "ripeness," or "maturity" in the manner of finely-aged wine. He is well aware of, and brings to the fore, the distinct contributions of diverse ethnomusicology scholars and others, but also postulates his opinion and filters their ideas through the lens of his own experience. It appears that he does not assume that readers of his text are seasoned students, as is often the case in a discipline where serious study happens at the graduate level. As the discipline has entered "polite society," so to speak, certain assumptions exist regarding its focus. While he dismantles and negates some, Nettl also affirms and expands on others.
In summary, Nettl discusses recent developments in the field in Part VI, acknowledging his position and describing what remained constant, was expanded, or changed from edition to edition. In reading this alongside his Elephant (Bruno Nettl, Nettl's Elephant: On the History of Ethnomusicology [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010]), and his autobiography (Bruno Nettl, Becoming an Ethnomusicologist: A Miscellany of Influences (Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities, no. 14) [Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013]), it becomes clear that Nettl recognizes the work of George Herzog, his earliest mentor, more forcefully. Beyond that, Nettl is well-versed in the European forebears of ethnomusicology and succinctly explains their contributions.
There are a few confusing moments. In the first chapter, it appears that Nettl will acknowledge ethnomusicology as a study of all music, but he backtracks quite early and relegates the discipline to a study of "non-Western and folk music" (p. 10). That ambivalence is reinforced in his second chapter's (somewhat unsuccessful) struggle to define music as something beyond sound and structures, only to provide a whole section devoted to music "as sound and structures." Later on, in regard to interdisciplinarity and the coexistence of ethnomusicology with other disciplines, he highlights the plight of the field's often discounted "sibling"--dance/ethnochoreology. It seems he would urge more involvement with and acknowledgement of dance scholarship, particularly when he states that "dance scholars ... know a lot more about music than musicologists about dance" (p. 453). He does not, however, encourage or provide any insights on how to improve the situation, any more than he advocates for more attention to ethnomusicology by anthropologists. I also noted that he emphasizes, in the first five parts, the similarities that exist between musicology (which he also presents as music history) and ethnomusicology, as if to suggest that the latter is not really that different or has not brought anything new to the table except as a study of non-Western and folk music. In chapter 30, he makes us aware of the various strides that were made in ethnomusicology that impacted scholars and scholarship in musicology, to the point that Nicholas Cook asked, "Are they all ethnomusicologists now?" (p. 440). Given that in the United States, as Nettl has clearly stated, ethnomusicologists are often subsumed under the department of musicology or anthropology, this is a valid query. Thus the jostling for recognition continues, even while musicologists appropriate methodologies and subject matter that used to be in the domain of ethnomusicologists and ethnomusicologists are more involved and active in historical studies that used to be considered the realm of musicologists.
Overall, the text provides an excellent historical account of the discipline: its issues, concepts, ideas, methods, terminology, and seminal (and other) scholars. It foregrounds the tremendous wisdom, knowledge, and understanding of the field that Nettl has accumulated while navigating the vast terrains of ethnomusicology in the United States. The text is accessible to undergraduates and graduate students, introducing concepts, issues, scholars, methods, and findings in the field in a compact yet approachable way.
JEAN NGOYA KIDULA
University of Georgia
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Music Library Association, Inc.
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Source Citation
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Kidula, Jean Ngoya. "The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three Discussions." Notes, vol. 73, no. 1, 2016, p. 128+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A460899562/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=07c2c641. Accessed 7 Mar. 2020.