Traditional Music and Cultural Identity: Persistent Paradigm in the History of

Ethnomusicology
Author(s): Philip V. Bohlman
Source: Yearbook for Traditional Music , 1988, Vol. 20 (1988), pp. 26-42
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/768164

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 TRADITIONAL MUSIC AND CULTURAL IDENTITY:
PERSISTENT PARADIGM IN THE HISTORY OF
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY1

by Philip V. Bohlman

1. Reassessing the Intellectual History of Ethnomusicology

As many of the articles in this volume of the Yearbook for Tradit
Music celebrate the first forty years of the ICTM and the concer
indeed polyphonic, voice that that organization has provided th
of traditional music throughout the world, they evoke a mood of ref
and reexamination of the intellectual history of ethnomusic
Reflection was abundantly evident as the ICTM paused in 1987
attention to its achievements with a grand commemoration in Berlin
taking stock of a 750-year history. But the reflective mood of the I
fortieth year was not simply a matter of panegyrizing the past; rat
it seemed equally concerned with reexamining the present and futur
light of that past, with contrasting the old and the new, with juxta
them and encouraging ethnomusicologists to welcome that which ha
recently come to shape our understanding of music throughout the
In this article I shall be taking the current mood of reflection as b
a point of departure and of arrival; in other words, I shall be loo
the subject of that reflection-the intellectual history of the fie
speculating about some of its motivations, some of the reasons th
past has come to play such an important role in assessing the pr
Indeed, this concern with the past has begun to distinguish cu
directions in the field and to inform our present discourse by forgi
ideas and fresh concepts. Ethnomusicology's reflective mood, the
well be signaling a new look at the future with its refined assessmen
the past.
Birthdays and anniversaries, such as the fortieth of the ICTM and
750th of Berlin, usually cause the celebrants to reflect on both yout
more advanced age. During much of the past forty years, how
ethnomusicologists more commonly thought of theirs as a young
and to some extent it is safe to say that many still do. Perhaps this
from a preference for using data we ourselves collect. Fieldwork, et
graphy, transcription, and even classification often stress the indiv
decision and involve some exercise of personal control over the m
presentation of someone else's music. Our constant concern for m
and cultural change also molds our historical thinking in special
ensuring that we not ignore the present and spurring us to speculat
the future. There are, of course, other reasons why many ethn
cologists seem preoccupied with the present and nervous about
disciplinary past. Surely there were early ethnomusicological studies
resulted from orientalist abuses or that relied on forms of collection and
analysis whose accuracy has to be questioned. Looking at any historical
body of scholarship turns up studies that are wrong-headed, and partic-

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BOHLMAN CULTURAL IDENTITY / 27

ularly complex fields like eth

studies whose few positive resul
is a tendency to equate much p
unchanging, frozen musical arti
ethnomusicological thinking.
Preoccupation with the presen
in turn produce a somewhat ah
of ethnomusicology, one I fin
pervading the ICTM at this tim
shed light on what I believe is a
that initially takes shape in the
field as a whole today. This un
I shall be calling paradigms, u
employed in the history of sc
Paradigms in ethnomusicology
two components they combine
situating music within other
concerned with these two compo
form one of the themes chos
birthday: traditional music and
this birthday successfully urged
present, so, too, do these them
same intellectual history. Furt
two paradigmatic components in
continual appearance together
ethnomusicological activities.
cology's past, I would submit,
more unified, and more consisten
unfolding.

2. Historical Structures in Eth

Traditional music and cultur
ethnomusicology because of
theoretically with each other.
so during a period of proto-ethn
as we know them began fully
traveler's accounts, for examp
European cultures (see Harrison
such as organological works,
scientific data, including them
knowledge (e.g., Kircher 1650). D
repertories, especially those of t
also appeared in early attempt
more likely than not non-Wes
musical development, or even as
musical development to be arres
early considerations of tradition
in systematic ways, that is, they

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28 / 1988 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

for the formation of paradigms. Some very basic aspects of ethn

cological theory are therefore wanting, and traditional music in such
works rarely exhibits connections to time, change, or the struct
individual cultures; one might even say that these works give us trad
music minus the tradition. Once the juxtaposition of the two paradig
components occurs, however, there emerges a historical impulse,
comes to characterize individual cultures and the discipline that inter
their music.
Three basic stages characterize the historical development of paradigms
in ethnomusicology.3 In the first stage, new data-the symbols that
represent both music and culture-are somehow generated or come to the
attention of a theorist. Such data clearly result from the conscious
engagement in fieldwork, but they also occur when new methods for
analyzing existing collections are applied. Second, the new data or
observations challenge existing ways of thinking about existing data, either
by filling in quantitative lacunae or rectifying previous errors. Finally,
in the need to account for new data, new theory comes into play.
Important in this process of historical development is that both the data
and the theories explaining them change; data are not simply data, but
are inexorably linked to those theories that give them meaning. Moreover,
the field's ability to account for data and to employ diverse theories to
interpret the data expands, in turn causing the field itself to expand.
Especially significant in the history of ethnomusicology is the conceptual
network or template that results from the juxtaposition of traditional music
and cultural identity. This network provided a methodology for assembling
data and comparing it quickly to theory. Historically, the network was
essential because it established a persistent means of developing new
paradigms by serving as the template for the three stages that occurred
at critical moments in the field's development. During ethnomusicology's
inchoate prehistory it is frequently possible to find one or several of these
stages, but not all three. Missionary accounts might be rife with data and
Athanasius Kircher's universal schemes deep in theory, but the processes
of challenging and reformulating data and theory were not yet fully
formed. In short, the conceptual network that took shape in the 18th
century became the basis for ethnomusicology's stature as a science:
paradigms emerged, developed, encountered challenges, and were deposed
through revolutions.
The inception of ethnomusicology as a scientific field was thus coeval
with the first efforts to couple traditional music and cultural identity within
a conceptual network. As this network became the template for examining
new ethnomusicological data and theory, so did the history of the field
become fundamentally unified. Such a network, furthermore, enables a
sufficiently large and cohesive community of scholars to recognize and
seize upon new paradigms--arguing for or against them-and to establish
common ways of isolating data and speculating upon their meanings. The
early ethnomusicologists are therefore initially singular and distinguishable
because they wrote for other ethnomusicologists, or at least for others
sharing an interest in the musics of the world, and the subject of this shared

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BOHLMAN CULTURAL IDENTITY / 29

discourse was traditional music itse

published studies of non-Western m
that a community of ethnomusic
century, for these studies reached
frequently in several editions, and
studies (cf. Willard 1834 and Jones
A science thus acquires a historic
theories always interacting. This
is clearly evident for the first ti
theory, crystallizing in some of th
into the conceptual context prov
identity.

3. Paradigmatic Juxtaposition of Traditional Music and Cultural

Identity
Essential to this reassessment of the history of ethnomusicology is my
claim that traditional music and cultural identity are two essentially
different concerns that the ethnomusicologist couples as a normative
research procedure. Neither is in itself sufficient, just as no single stage
of data collection and theory building is sufficient. From an historiographic
standpoint traditional music symbolizes the description of data, those
discrete objects that lend themselves to analysis. Whereas this concept of
traditional music implies that a datum can be understood by itself, the
contrastive concept of cultural identity insists that a datum is not
completely understood only in terms of itself, but that it functions in
accordance with external relationships. My evidence for this claim of
paradigmatic juxtaposition is chiefly historical, and, by extension, I am
also using the history of the field as one means of defining the field, of
identifying what ethnomusicologists have been doing for over two
centuries.
If there is a juxtaposition of traditional music and cultural identity that
is coeval with the history of the field, there must also be formats and
techniques capable of rendering various ethnomusicological activities
normative. These manifest themselves in the scientific language with which
ethnomusicologists communicate, further unifying the ways in which ideas
are exchanged and a community of scholars forms. The juxtaposition
further necessitates a specific scientific superstructure, which then combines
four areas of investigation and discourse that constitute the field as a whole.
Examining these four areas permits us to discuss the interaction of
structural elements at different stages in the history of ethnomusicology
and to determine why critical moments of change occurred in certain ways.
The first area comprises documentation and data-gathering. Though
seemingly an activity that encourages little change, critical moments in
the history of ethnomusicology often result from dramatically altered
concepts of what data are and how to interpret them. Many early collectors
of folk song paid relatively little attention to music, believing that the
distinctive character of the song lay in its texts. The data offered as folk
songs in Arnim and Brentano's Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806-1808) or

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30 / 1988 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

Frances James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-
are hopelessly incomplete by our current expectations. Technology
a major role in this area of critical change, for example at the end of
19th century when true field-recording became a reality for the fir
or in recent years when videotape recording has begun its dram
transformation of the field.

Critical historical moments are also evident in the response of

ethnomusicological theory to more expansive ideas. Contemporary
intellectual currents often produce essentially new and different
juxtapositions, which ipso facto yield an abundance of new paradigms.
These more expansive ideas often play an especially seminal role in
ethnomusicology because of its characteristic responsiveness to theory and
method in other fields. In the pages that follow I shall be arguing that
the Enlightenment and evolutionary theory, for example, had profound
effects upon critical moments in the history of the field.

Institutional change becomes a third area in the field's structural response

at critical historical moments. Institution in this sense may mean a formal
scientific organization or simply a community of scholars working on
common problems. It may also result from the response of the field as
a whole to the introduction of a technological innovation or an influential
idea in a cognate field. One can describe the coordination of field studies
and the formation of recording archives at the turn of the century as an
institutional response to new recording technologies and the mass
production of these. Institutions, in fact, appear to be one of the most
malleable and volatile areas in the scientific superstructure, for critical
moments often show dramatic realignments or the formation of entirely
new organizations. Thus, during the period of disciplinary revolution in
the late 1940s and 1950s, the formation of both the International Folk
Music Council and the Society for Ethnomusicology symbolized
institutional responses in the scientific superstructure.

Finally, the forums for discourse serve as an area for restructuring the
field. At a critical moment there inevitably are new developments in the
communication of theory, thus defining more clearly the language shared
by a community of scholars. At each critical moment in ethnomusicology's
history, new journals appeared and a new genre of scientific writing took
shape. These forums encourage the exchange of data and theory, in essence
defining and strengthening the ethnomusicological community. This was
as true at the first critical moment of the 18th century as it is today. Forums
for discourse may emphasize traditional music and cultural identity in
different ways, but they unquestionably broaden and formalize
juxtaposition, and play an especially powerful role in the transition from
theory to paradigm. What is important about these four areas of scientific
superstructure is that they respond in concert to facilitate and spur change
in the field. Their historical tendency is, I believe, to converge, prescribing
ever more precisely the critical moments that mark the history of
ethnomusicology.

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BOHLMAN CULTURAL IDENTITY / 31

4. The Fundamental Periods of

Formation

In order to discern a cohesive intellectual history, I have attempted to

identify and describe moments when the juxtaposition of traditional music
and cultural identity produced the most radical change. These moments,
in essence, act as milestones, calling attention to those activities and
intellectual discourses I am designating as ethnomusicological. I posit here
that there were four very significant moments in the history of the field,
although I would also recognize claims for other historical moments
exhibiting conditions for the juxtaposition of traditional music and cultural
identity in less dramatic fashion. I am not attempting to tender these four
moments an unassailable privilege; indeed, if they were completely unique
and their discursive processes unrepeatable, they would actually be
idiosyncratic moments in ethnomusicology's past. My goal here is to find
a persuasive model that embraces the entire history of the field, not to
single out one model that excludes all others. Therefore, the most important
aspect of this model and the four critical moments that present it is to
illumine persistent paths along which the intellectual precepts of
contemporary ethnomusicologists have systematically developed for over
200 years.

4.1 The Eighteenth Century: Establishment of Ethnomusicology in a

Progressive Spirit
Ethnomusicology is in many ways a disciplinary child of the Enlight-
enment. The century of the Enlightenment is notable in intellectual history
for giving birth to several modern disciplines, which themselves took shape
from the juxtaposition of paradigmatic elements (cf. Allen 1962 and Boon
1982). Both anthropology and music history, for example, emerged as full-
fledged intellectual pursuits in the eighteenth century, and it is hardly
surprising that already at its inception ethnomusicology should have drawn
sustenance from the same sources as these sister disciplines. The most
profound Enlightenment influence on ethnomusicology was the creation
of a radically new concept of the "Other" (Fabian 1983). For the first time
the Other was not simply an aberrant being in a human universe measured
by Judeo-Christian and circum-Mediterranean thinking. The Other could
have a different history and a different culture, hence music that functioned
in ways different from those known only in Europe.
In their attempts to analyze the music of the Other and understand the
meanings and functions specific to that music, the ethnomusicologists of
the late 18th century also engaged for the first time in substantive and
extensive ethnomusicological cultural critique. Upon examining another
music to determine its indigenous history, structure, and relation to society,
scholars like Joseph-Marie Amiot and William Jones perceived new
perspectives with which to examine European music; indeed, they
frequently and overtly sought to strip European music of the factitious
privilege accruing to it in a colonialist society. Amiot, for example,
rephrased many of the basic arguments in the 18th-century aesthetic battle
of the Ancients and the Moderns in his study of Chinese music (1779),

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32 / 1988 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

emphatically arguing that, if one is to engage in this line of rea

the only possible conclusion is that Chinese music and other Asian m
are far superior to the music of either Ancients or Moderns in Eur
history. This new practice of cultural critique, arising from a reexam
of the relation between the European and the Other, reformulated th
and results of comparative research. It supplanted coloniali
missionary motivations with more scientific impulses, and in s
undergirded a more explicitly ethnomusicological framework for th
of the Other's music.
Characteristic of this first moment of crisis and revolution in
ethnomusicology is that many scientific structures were themselves ne
or at least beginning their own histories in quite new forms. The notio
of another culture as an integral unit, independent of a model of creati
situating the inception of human society in 5005 BCE, was a radic
departure from an ethnography that had previously been the handmaid
of missionaries. New forums for discourse underscored the new theoretical
directions. Musical historiography as a genre of musical writing, for
example, proliferated in the second half of the 18th century, sometimes
including music in non-Western societies. Institutional changes, too, were
important as university positions in music history were created, and
societies for the study of non-Western culture were established to
accompany colonial expansion (Jones 1792). We also witness a sweeping
systematization of data collection, as folk-song scholars began amassing
collections and musical scholars joined scientific expenditions (Villoteau
1823 and 1826). The most important studies of non-Western music, for
example, William Jones's On the Musical Modes of the Hindus (1792) and
Amiot's Memoire sur la musique des chinois (1779), had their basis in long
years of fieldwork and the systematic study of all aspects of musical
culture. No late 18th-century ethnomusicologist illustrates the transfor-
mation of attitude and practice more vividly than Amiot, who was, in
fact, a French missionary in Peking. His Memoire, however, is a radical
departure from any previous missionary work. It is objective, lucid, and
dispassionately distanced from missionary matters; indeed, if one has to
level criticism at the author's stance toward his subject matter, it would
be to caution the reader to be aware of the unrestrained awe with which
Amiot sometimes portrays Chinese intellectual and musical achievements.
Subsequent studies of non-Western music by missionaries or clerics, for
example, Villoteau's studies of music in Egypt (1823 and 1826), often take
up the mantle of objective scholarship first worn by Amiot, thus illustrating
again the fundamental transformation in ethnomusicological encounters
with the Other that Enlightenment attitudes had spurred.
The most vivid illustration of the paradigmatic confluence of traditional
music and cultural identity at the beginning of ethnomusicology's history
is undoubtedly Johann Gottfried Herder's circumscription of a specifically
ethnomusicological repertory with the term Volkslied. With the concept
of Volkslied Herder at once juxtaposed Lied, representing traditional music,
and Volk, representing cultural identity. For Herder the musical and
cultural meanings of Volkslied were very complex and their juxtaposition

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 BOHLMAN CULTURAL IDENTITY / 33

even more complex. Language, for

both Volk and Lied; that is to say, it
distinguished its cultural identity (
Herder was the role of the group
structure and a tradition within whi
(ibid.:167). Immanent in Volkslie
language, and culture itself, thus a
encapsulate and specify cultural id

Volkslied, then, formed a new parad

and a focus for theoretical debate.
considerable debate about the approp
1971 and Pulikowski 1933). There w
scientific revolution-in the structu
with which it came to share theory
of collections in the 19th century
quantity of data, but attitudes concer
were constantly scrutinized, especi
that many folk-song specialists ac
orientation.

The critical moment of the mid-18th century secured the beginning of

ethnomusicology for other generic and cultural reasons as well. Early music
historians accorded non-Western music a position in music historiography.
A progressive interpretation replaced the polemical model of Ancients
versus Moderns, in which non-Western music had no place. From the
perspective of his studies of Chinese music Amiot, for example, saw the
path of this progression in geographic terms, moving from East to West,
presaging even Hegel's 19th-century claims for the course of a universa
history. Still other progressive interpretations were similar to Johann
Nikolaus Forkel's construct of music developing along a maritime chain,
in other words as water flowing ineluctably into larger bodies and
eventually the ocean (1788:XVI). The progressive model was both subjec-
tive and objective, but I think it fair to say that the model did lend a
scientific integrity to non-Western music that was absent from previous
missionary accounts, which generally portrayed it as lacking history,
abandoned by the progress Europe has so enjoyed. Moreover, it is
important for the history of the field to note that several of the most
important music historians of the 19th century embraced non-Western
music as the objects for study (e.g., Kiesewetter 1842 and Fetis 1835), and
they did so by turning to the studies of the late 18th century (see Bohlman
1986). Investigations into non-Western and folk music had generated a
body of literature, some of which (e.g., Jones 1792) appeared in several
editions during the 19th century. The revolution in the second half of the
18th century had unquestionably created a scientific superstructure for
non-Western and folk music, a form of ethnomusicology that the 19th
century would persistently refine until the second critical moment in the
history of ethnomusicology (see Bohlman 1987).

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34 / 1988 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

4.2. The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: Ethnomusicolo

and Evolution among the Musical Sciences
The second half of the 19th century, especially the decade of the 1
was again replete with conditions favorable to a revolution in e
musicological thinking. And again, the field responded directly
influence of more expansive ideas, particularly to evolutionary t
Aiding and abetting the revolution were juxtapositions of traditional
and cultural identity in all four structural areas. Portable field-recor
devices made it possible to experience and preserve traditional m
new ways. The publication of the Vierteljahrsschrift fiir Musikwissens
in 1885 signaled the inception of a new forum for discourse. And, of c
institutional changes were occurring rapidly, with orientalist scholar
in full swing, ethnological institutions sending expeditions througho
world, and the university nurturing more forms of musical stud
That the models for progressive musical change of the late 18th ce
should yield to an evolutionary model is hardly surprising. The
historical constructs are in many ways related, with the evoluti
relying on a very specific and quantifiable form of data that allowed
theoretical precision. Both traditional music and cultural ide
furthermore, lent themselves in convincing ways to evolutionary th
For the ethnomusicologists in the late 19th century, music became a
special type of data. This is obvious in the writings of Alexander
(1885), and in different ways in the work of Carl Stumpf and others tr
traditional music as a new form of social scientific data, especial
means of encoding psychological meaning (e.g., Stumpf 1885). A
interest in more diverse kinds of data likewise indicated a grow
separation from music-history writing (e.g., Stumpf 1892). Evolution
theory was also useful in accounting for, both positively and negativ
the multifarious cultural identities that ethnological studies of th
century had revealed. The best example of such an applicatio
evolutionary theory is probably Richard Wallaschek's Primitive
(1970), which draws directly from the writings of Herbert Spencer (
Spencer 1868), which were themselves a condensation and critiq
Darwin's evolutionary claims for music, especially those contained in
second volume of The Descent of Man (1871).
The revolution of the late 19th century initiated changes in et
musicology that gave the field even more independence, the di
scholarly backgrounds of the field's practitioners notwithstanding. F
this perspective it seems quite understandable that Guido Adler
create a category for ethnomusicological research, Musikologie, i
scheme for musicology (Mugglestone 1971:14-15). Different areas
superstructure also achieved a fairly high degree of institutionali
This is evident in Native American field-collecting in the United
and the establishment of sound archives in Berlin and Vienna. World's
fairs and international expositions attempted to gather musicians and
instruments from societies throughout the world, even trying to replicate
the communal settings for performance by displaying gamelans in Javanese
villages or drumming ensembles in African villages (cf. Hinsley 1981 and

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BOHLMAN CULTURAL IDENTITY / 35

Stocking 1987).4 Virtually any com

Western music as part of its pur
thick sections (cf. Bohlman 1987). A
akin to the ethnomusicological m
discourse. Broadly theoretical wo
cology and non-Western music's
in general begin to appear, sugge
field, such as ethnographie musi
next critical moment that the field loosens its shackles and stakes out
scientific turf that is clearly its own, designating that turf, vergleichende
Musikwissenschaft.

4.3. The Early Twentieth Century: Comparativism in Vergleichende

Musikwissenschaft and Kulturkreislehre

The critical moment that produced the paradigms of vergleichende

Musikwissenschaft exhibited one of the most conservative revolutions in
the history of ethnomusicology. I employ such an oxymoronic designation
because the early 20th century was a period of considerable intellectual
stock-taking, yet a time when some fairly radical assessments of existing
data began to influence ethnomusicological theory-making. After a period
of wide-ranging response to evolutionary theory, vergleichende Musik-
wissenschaft grew from an assimilation of many different approaches to
traditional music and cultural identity. The reflective quality of this stance
was also one espousing theoretical refinement and crystallization around
the practice of comparison. The entire concept of comparison identified
more precisely how data should be used and, by extension, what
constituted truly scientific data, thus rendering the comparative process
both delimiting and limiting. From the perspective of cultural identity,
evolutionary theory was employed to reveal patterns of diffusion and to
create a model of universal music history that converged, after a positivistic
journey, on Europe.
Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft differs somewhat from previous
paradigmatic frameworks because of the role played by institutional
juxtaposition among the areas of the field's superstructure. Specific schools
of social theory, for example the so-called "Vienna School" of cultural
history, provided more rigid institutional connections for vergleichende
Musikwissenschaft (Bose 1953 and Schneider 1976). These connections
insisted rather strongly not just on comparison itself, but on the specific
ways in which comparison can take place. This institutional importance
was admittedly eurocentric, but it also achieved the end of coining a single,
common name for ethnomusicology for the first time. We thus observe
that name extended to other aspects of scientific structure, for example
the forums for discourse, such as the Sammelbiinde fiir Vergleichende
Musikwissenschaft, the first periodical of any kind devoted specifically
to ethnomusicology.5 Theoretical studies in ethnomusicology proliferated
during the early 20th century, incorporating comparative models both
explicitly and implicitly (cf. Lach 1924 and Lachmann 1929). These
theoretical studies, through their comparative reassessment of data, also

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36 / 1988 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

posed new questions about the relations between musical sound and ot
phenomena in non-Western music, thereby fostering comprehensive
analytical techniques for the study of traditional music from b
musicological and anthropological perspectives (e.g., Heinitz 193
Roberts 1933).
In my present historical examination of ethnomusicology, vergleich
Musikwissenschaft plays a significant role because of the inten
paradigmatic debate that centers on the notion of comparison. Fo
scholars, especially those accepting the priority of history as a mean
attributing cultural identity, comparison was a rallying point; synch
ically analytical approaches to traditional music, such as cross-cu
studies of form or genre, were also fundamentally comparative. For
scholars, especially those suspicious of relating any cultural activ
Europe, comparison became the primary evil of vergleichende M
wissenschaft, the reason it could not adequately juxtapose traditional
and cultural identity. The real ills of vergleichende Musikwissen
remain undiagnosed, and perhaps always will, and consequently th
yet no consensus as to whether these ills were somehow endemic
comparative endeavor or simply the result of the abuses, intentio
simply symptomatic of the state of available data, of a few indi
scholars. These contrasting attitudes, nevertheless, sharpene
theoretical debate that focused on ethnomusicology, and, in so doing,
next critical moment was empowered to build the modern field
ethnomusicology upon foundations clearly the field's own.

4.4. The Second Half of the Twentieth Century: Anthropology

the Formation of Modern Ethnomusicology
Surely there are many reasons why a vocal reaction against v
gleichende Musikwissenschaft arose in the late 1940s and 1950s, so
that it might seem almost trivializing to designate the critical mome
radical in its revolutionary spirit. The Second World War must b
as a profound catalyst for the reformulation of international thinking
remnants of a positivistic Kulturkreis interpretation of a universal his
tendency receded along with the colonial division of the world th
justified them. New attitudes toward traditional music, too, reflected
need for a more egalitarian internationalism. We see this vividly
early proceedings of the International Folk Music Council and immed
in the first volumes of the IFMC Journal, which deliberately atte
to represent as many international folk musics as possible, one might
especially those in nations with newly emerging political identities.6 D
the late 1940s and 1950s political and ideological changes necessa
assumed different directions, but there were nevertheless obvious at
in the study of traditional music to broaden and reformulate previous
of ascribing and describing cultural identity. From many possible exa
I shall choose but one, and that one from the German Democratic
Republic, namely Wolfgang Steinitz's reinterpretation of existing collec-
tions of German folk songs, such as in his Deutsche Volkslieder
demokratischen Charakters aus sechs Jahrhunderten (1954 and 1962). In

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 BOHLMAN CULTURAL IDENTITY / 37

this critical and historical study

in the German Federal Republ
or dramatic data; rather, he reli
(Erk-B6hme 1893-94) and the co
in Freiburg/Breisgau, copies o
prior to the war.7 Steinitz, how
meaning-a vastly different juxt
identity-than any previous sc
emerging cultural and historic
Republic.
All of the areas of ethnomusicology's scientific superstructure underwent
radical transformation during the 1950s. Institutional changes were
pervasive in virtually every form of ethnomusicological study. Instigating
these changes was anthropology, which provided the theoretical frame-
work for ethnomusicology's internationalist impetus. Anthropology
insisted that the comparison within vergleichende Musikwissenschaft was
impossible because of the absence of sufficiently comparable data and
misleading because of the failure adequately to penetrate music in relation
to its own cultural identity (cf. Haydon 1941:216 and Merriam 1977:
192-94). In North America the theoretical revolution fomented by
anthropology was so powerful that an institutional break from musicology
occurred, for anthropologists insisted on a new juxtaposition in which
cultural identity was understood only through quite new paradigms.8
Changes in the name of the field-thus in its fundamental disciplinary
integrity--reflected sweeping institutional change. Ethnomusicology, the
coinage of which by Jaap Kunst in 1950 has almost mythical symbolism,
has stuck with us, whereas Musikalische Volkerkunde, also proposed to
redesignate the field (see, especially, Bose 1953), has not been as far-
reaching; few ethnomusicologists today, I dare say, could have any doubts
that the name, ethnomusicology, is with us for good, no matter in which
directions debates about its aims and theoretical approaches take us.
As the critical moment of the 1950s generated increasingly precise
theory, this focused more specifically on the field itself, finding forums
for discourse, such as the journals of the IFMC and SEM, that also were
specifically fashioned for ethnomusicology. And one must say that these
journals truly became the forums for testing the paradigms of the field
itself. Documentation and data-gathering, too, became more international,
advancing the call for radical redress in the 1950s. Technological advances
rendered sweeping changes in the ability to gather data in the field more
completely; in fact, few reporting from the field in the early issues of the
Ethno-Musicology Newsletter failed to address the specific characteristics
of their recording equipment and the subsequent nature of the resulting
collections. Ethnomusicologists perceived a critical need to enlarge the data
bank of traditional music serving the field. This expansion, then, would
reveal new patterns of cultural identity that could not be discerned without
more data. Indeed, from this paradigm of the 1950s stems the
ethnomusicological insistence on fieldwork and the scrutiny of vast
amounts of data.

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38 / 1988 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

The formation of modern ethnomusicology allowed virtually endl

juxtapositions of traditional music and cultural identity. In so doing, th
discipline nevertheless insisted upon exactly the sort of juxtaposition th
I am claiming as fundamental to ethnomusicology's conceptual netwo
Each ethnomusicologist became responsible for determining those w
in which a specific corpus of traditional music related to a specifi
framework for cultural identity. Neither traditional music nor cultu
identity could stand alone. The essential juxtaposition, thus, became fixe
in the ways ethnomusicologists prepare as students to enter the field, wr
articles or monographs, and interact with the scientific institutions of wh
they are members. Each modern institution of ethnomusicology support
some form of archive for the storage and study of data and fosters fiel
study by its staff and students, which in turn enriches the holdings of t
archives: the locus of the archive, therefore, is inextricably bound to th
center of theoretical work. Whereas ethnomusicologists may also ha
additional identities-as musicologists, anthropologists, folklorists,
others-they share the common identity that results from juxtaposi
traditional music and cultural identity.

5. Yet Another Juxtaposition in Conclusion: Past and Present

It is probably all too obvious from the tone of this article that I t
the process of historical reflection rather seriously, if not quite literally
that I regard it as immanent in the present moment of ethnomusicology
intellectual history. The historical sketch that I have presented clea
suggests that ethnomusicology has a larger unity that has carried over t
the present. It follows that the field very likely stands now in some relat
to a moment of crisis or revolution, theory-formation or paradig
refinement. After all, the revolution of the 1950s is surely won, with t
paradigms of the combatants now firmly ensconced in ethnomusicologic
theory and discourse.
Do we, then, presently stand at a critical moment in the history
ethnomusicology? If so, can we accurately observe and describe th
moment's paradigms and the ways they inform our current debates
theoretical formulations? I apologize if such questions seem at this po
overly rhetorical, or if I have posed them so that negative responses
all but impossible. But then, the present is always too obvious and n
obvious enough. It would not be particularly difficult to attempt
elaboration of the four-part scientific superstructure based on our c
temporary ethnomusicological concerns and activities, but, lacking prope
historical distance, I would necessarily engage in a certain degree o
speculation. Instead, I shall more briefly use as evidence the mood
reflection to which I referred at the beginning of the present article.
Ethnomusicology seems to be entering a historical period in which the
juxtaposing of past and present is producing especially rich results. T
juxtaposition parallels in many ways the interaction of traditional music
and cultural identity that is so essential to the function of paradigms in
the history of ethnomusicology. Indeed, I think it safe to say that we sta
at a critical moment in our history at which the past has become a riche

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 BOHLMAN CULTURAL IDENTITY / 39

font for traditional music and the

the present offers an understandin
diverse than ever before. Historica
past, reformulating the intellectu
the most important debates of the
paradigmatic concerns. And if the
persists as it has thus far since
examination of the past will sur
which traditional music and cultural identity interact to embody
ethnomusicology's present.

NOTES

1. This article is an expanded version of a paper read at the 29th Conference o

International Council for Traditional music. Financial support for the research up
which the article is based came from the American Council for Learned Societies
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the Leo Baeck Institute. I am espec
grateful to Joep Bor, Dieter Christensen, and Bruno Nettl for their helpful comm
on the article.
2. The seminar theories for the role of paradigms in the history of science appear in the
writings of Thomas S. Kuhn (1970). Despite ongoing debates about the meaning of
scientific paradigms and their relation to scientific revolution, Kuhn's work has provided
far-reaching models for the explanation of historical change.
3. The three stages I develop here follow from Kuhn (see especially 1970:25-34), though
I have fitted the stages to the somewhat different conditions prevalent in a social and
humanistic science.
4. To some degree it remains an adjunct ethnomusicological activity of anthropological
museums and institutes to retrieve music and musicians from the field and to re-present
them in a properly ethnographic venue. For a recent version see Aditi: The Living Arts
of India (Gallagher et al. 1985).
5. Supporting my claim that vergleichende Musikwissenschaft arose from a conservative
revolution is the reflective nature of many articles (e.g., a German translation of Ellis
1885 and a reprint of Stumpf 1892) and the historical awareness of the first volume
of the Sammelbiinde, which appeared in 1922 and was edited by Erich M. von Hornbostel
and Carl Stumpf.
6. It seems only too obvious that the Council chose to designate itself as "international"
when deciding upon its name.
7. For a listing of these collections and their locations in the GDR see Steinitz (1978:330-
32); a second and somewhat more extensive copy of these holdings was sent at the
same time to the University of Chicago, where it constitutes the Wieboldt-Rosenwald
Collection of German Folk Songs in Special Collections of the Regenstein Library.
8. Social scientists far outnumbered musicologists in the letters, field reports, and course
assessments that make up the bulk of the contents of the Ethno-Musicology Newsletter
during the 1950s. To the extent that the Newsletter, predecessor of the present journal,
represents Alan Merriam's attempt, as editor, to stake out the community of scholars
in ethnomusicology, it is a striking witness to the role of anthropology during the critical
moment of the 1950s.

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40 / 1988 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

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