ABSTRACT
I confess at the outset that I am hesitant lest what I say be taken as anything but the set of suggestions it represents: ethnomusicology is currently in a startling state of flux, and quite probably no one either does, or can, grasp all its complexities. Six years ago, when I undertook the discussion “Ethnomusicology Revisited” 2 it all seemed reasonably simple and clearcut; while I still support—and might well elaborate—the thrust of those remarks, they represent today only one part of what ethnomusicology involves. While we could speak then of ethnomusicology as a field in terms of a set of dichotomies between musicological and anthropological approaches, it is now evident that the intervening period has witnessed the emergence of a host of other specialists who call themselves ethnomusicologists, or who at least use the word in conjunction with their activities. Whether they are, in fact, ethnomusicologists, and whether what they do is ethnomusicology may be debatable, but the fact remains that they exist, they act, and they are part of some kind of entity which involves in some way the word “ethnomusicology.”
