ABSTRACT
The most important single research centre during the 1960s and 1970s was INIDEF, the Instituto Interamericano de Etnomusicologia y Folklore (now FUNDEF - Fundacion de Ethnomusicologia y Folklore), based in Caracas and directed by the Argentinean Isabel Aretz and (now deceased) Venezuelan Luis Felipe Ramon y Rivera. Short, six-month courses, funded by UNESCO, offered limited training to students from throughout the continent. A search for origins and unchanged retentions, especially of European forms, is a characteristic that has only recendy begun to be overcome by a deeper appreciation of the inherent dynamism of ex pressive culture. The last two decades have seen qualitative advances in the application of con temporary anthropological and ethnomusicological theory, and a corresponding move from limited descriptive to interpretative ethnographic methodologies, especially in Mexico, Brazil and the Southern Cone.
