ABSTRACT
Readers of this, and other, journals hardly need be reminded of my persistent interest over the years in definitions of what ethnomusicology is and what it ought to be (e.g., Merriam 1960; 1969; 1975). It is now more than 25 years since, according to common belief, Jaap Kunst first put “ethno-musicology” into print (Kunst 1950), and we thus ought to be able now to look back with some objectivity at what has since happened to that word, and what happened to its predecessor—“comparative musicology”—before it. In other words, the points are now historic, though the end result is far from settled, and it is in this spirit that I wish to treat the materials to be discussed herein. While I have not gone through the literature with a fine-toothed comb in an attempt to find all definitions, I have located a substantial number of them, enough, I trust, to indicate fairly the overall trends and changes. Neither have I gone outside the United States for the most part, though some such definitions are included where they seemed especially pertinent. My major purpose, then, is to discuss what happened over time to these two terms in the United States, and what consequences occurred because of the changes that took place.
