Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Ethnomusicologists typically think of themselves as the most anti-canonic, flexible, and open-minded of academics. Most were trained in the Western European art music (WEAM) tradition. However, while early nurtured in those musical performance practices and social behavioral assumptions, many have come to question the supremacy, autonomy, and unassailability of that tradition and its canon which includes both particular preferred genres and forms, and particular exalted composers. Ethnomusicologists typically eschew these “preferences,” at least in their research. This rejection of WEAM protocol and canon, however, is much less evident in world music ensembles taught by ethnomusicologists in academic institutions. In fact, in such ensembles we see something of the very processes of exaltation and essentialization, found in WEAM, which originally fed many ethnomusicologists’ presumed un-sentimental and un-hagiographic musical views. We might go so far as to term this process “internal orientalism,” in which many ensemble directors perpetuate and elevate a particular world music ensemble canon. The resultant narrative is one embracing mainly particular representatives of “great traditions” (Hindustani and Karnatak Indian classical, Ghanaian Ewe for West African, Arab for Middle Eastern, Central Java and Balinese for Southeast Asian gong chime ensembles, and others). These ensembles were all in fact established earlier by prestigious founding scholars of the field, whose predilections (often based upon serendipitous connections and first encounters with the ensembles) were later rationalized and prioritized as possessing self-evident aesthetic and pedagogic values. In this way, ethnomusicologists re-apply the very hegemonic hierarchies they had thitherto questioned.