MUSC 253D: Issues in the Ethnography of Music

University of California, Santa Cruz

Explores ethnography—the description of culture—as it relates to musicology and ethnomusicology, particularly where culture and cultural production are historically dynamic and geographically porous. Examines music with sensitivity to such complexities of context, and the disciplinary points of reference from which cultural difference is calculated. Considers the ideological imprint of methodology on cultural analysis: how to study an unfamiliar music in a way that transcends the measure of difference from the familiar, and, conversely, how to conduct an objective study of a familiar music.