ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, African scholars at the University of Nairobi decided to found a journal devoted to the scholarly study of African music. They decided to call it African Musicology. Though the proposed title seemed attractive because of its apparent novelty, the reaction to it was mixed, for it seemed to suggest the existence of an African tradition of musicology distinctive and separate from musicology in the Western tradition. Nobody doubted, however, the founders' intention: to create a journal that would specialize in African materials, encouraging an Africa-centered approach to the presentation and interpretation of data.
