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This is an author-produced PDF of an entry accepted for publication in The SAGE Encyclopedia of
Ethnomusicology, copyright SAGE Publications. Until publication, the citation information of the definitive
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Schrag, Brian. Forthcoming (2015). Ethnomusicology, Applied." In Sturman, Janet, and Golson, J. Geoffrey,
eds. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Ethnomusicology. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology, Applied
Applied Ethnomusicology refers both to a formal sub-discipline of ethnomusicology and to a
broad category of ethnomusicologically-informed activities outside of the writing-based core of
academia. Though music-in-culture researchers often engaged in activities outside the realm of
academia before the disciplines inception in the mid-1950s, extensive and explicit discussion of
Applied Ethnomusicology began only in the 1990s. This movement was part of wider
developments in the social sciencesespecially anthropology and folklorethat questioned the
priority, and even the possibility, of objectivity and pure scientific investigation. Applied
Ethnomusicology now represents one of a growing number of scholarly communities loosely
connected by concerns for positive social impact. Some influential academic groups identify
themselves explicitly as applied ethnomusicologists; others use expressions for specific types of
applied worksuch as medical ethnomusicologyor prefer descriptors like engaged, action,
public, activist, or advocacy ethnomusicology.

Historical Development

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of researchers recorded performances of the music
of indigenous communities in North America, in part to safeguard remnants of this heritage in the
face of colonialism-driven loss. Frances Densmore, Charles Seeger, Alan Lomax, and others
promoted archiving, festivals, and other actions that they thought would benefit societies and their
sub-groups. Though these activist streams were significant, ethnomusicologists through the 1960s
worked primarily to collect and analyze musical data based on their fieldwork among
ethnolinguistic minorities. They recorded and transcribed songs and other musical enactments,
described how music interacted with the society in which it originated, and presented their results to
other scholars. The young field of ethnomusicology focused on ways-of-being that would gain
respect from established scholarly traditions, descriptions and analyses that maintained as much
scientific objectivity as possible. Alan Merriam famously described ethnomusicology as sciencing
about music (1964:25), echoing functionalist goals of objectivity common in the 1950s and 1960s.
Four factors stand out as having been especially important in motivating ethnomusicologists
to look beyond formal written scholarship. First, they highly value fieldwork, which leads them into
professional and personal relationships with the people they study. Friendships resulting from
fieldwork often move researchers to care about the arts and artists they work with, inspiring efforts
to improve peoples living conditions, market musical instruments, advocate for human rights, and
other mutual goals.
Second, the theoretical milieu of ethnomusicology, once steeped in functionalist research
methods that engender relational distance between researcher and researched, shifted to interpretive
anthropological values that affirm subjects full humanity and rights. Interpretive approaches
increase ethnomusicologists scholarly humility, leading them to highlight the voices and concerns
of the people they work with. Ethnomusicologys move toward non-academic engagement
advanced in close relationship to the fields of folklore and anthropology. In fact, ethnomusicologists
Thomas Vennum, Anthony Seeger, Jeff Todd Titon, Robert Garfias, and others played important
roles in applied folklore institutions in the 1980s and beyond. These theoretical changes were
nourished by concomitant social trends in the US, including the folk revival movement. Public and
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private organizations like the Smithsonian Institution and state arts agencies provided finances and
infrastructure to support these outward-looking developments.
Third, internationally-linked communities have responded to artistic loss associated with
globalization, religious expansion, conflict, nationalization, and commodification of musical
production; UNESCOs Intangible Cultural Heritage effort to protect dying artisanal and artistic
traditions represents one high profile example. In addition, Christian churches and other faith
communities around the world have begun reflecting on and acting to reinvigorate the older artistic
traditions often devalued by their missionary progenitors. Increasing bodies of research showing
benefits of expressive arts therapies and bioneurological bases for wellness also provide important
resources for organizations trying to help in socially and physically traumatic contexts.
Fourth and finally, the number of people educated as ethnomusicologists has greatly
exceeded the number of related teaching and research positions in academia. This disparity provides
strong incentive to find new ways to earn a living with an ethnomusicologists competencies.

Examples of Ethnomusicologys Applications

The nature of musical enactment lends itself to achieving countless purposes: it marks messages as
important, separate from everyday activities; it touches not only cognitive, but also experiential and
emotional ways of knowing; it aids memory of messages; it reveals social values and knowledge; it
increases the impact of messages through multiple media that often include the whole body; it
concentrates or expands the information contained in messages; it instills solidarity in its performers
and experiencers; it exhibits engagingly complex congeries of meaning and form; it provides
socially acceptable frameworks for expressing difficult or new ideas; it inspires and moves people
to action; it can embody strong signs of identity; it can affirm or undermine power relationships,
integrate body and neurological systems, and open spaces for people to imagine and dream.
People doing applied work identify, participate in, analyze, and draw on such characteristics
of the arts they work with. Ethnomusicologists and others record, analyze, and archive musical
performance in its social contexts to produce, disseminate, and diversify knowledge. Scholars find
pleasure and professional success in collecting and analyzing the worlds musics. In addition,
archives may become spaces for promotion of minority arts, sometimes providing representatives of
dying traditions material to help them reclaim some of their lost heritage.
In the public sector, applications include promoting and planning festivals of diverse artistic
traditions, integrating such traditions into school curricula, and helping draft laws that encourage
these traditions and their bearers. Development organizations work with communities to identify
goals for a better future: increased health, more peaceful relationships, a stronger sense of identity,
and other features of well-being. They then incorporate community arts into plans to educate and
motivate people to reach their goals. Ethnomusicologists may also help increase community health
by highlighting the physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of local rituals.
Finally, an increasing number of people with competencies in applied ethnomusicology find
employment in remunerative contexts like these: Helping businesses develop solidarity among their
employees by involving them in each others diverse musical traditions; integrating artists
representing older traditions into tourism; making Hollywood representations of minority
communities more accurate and respectful; integrating ethnomusicological approaches to expressive
arts therapies; and curating museum exhibits.

Institutionalization of Applied Ethnomusicology

The vitality of a sub-discipline like Applied Ethnomusicology is revealed in part by how widely and
deeply its ideas and proponents are integrated into its parent disciplines activities. The two largest
scholarly organizations dedicated to ethnomusicology are the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM)
and the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM). Applied Ethnomusicology plays a
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growing role in both of these societies. SEM published a special issue of its journal
Ethnomusicology on Music and the Public Interest in 1992, and its Committee on Applied
Ethnomusicology commenced in 1998. Presentations on Applied Ethnomusicology subjects appear
regularly in SEMs annual and regional meetings. ICTM officially recognized its Study Group on
Applied Ethnomusicology in 2007, which has since held three international meetings. Miriam
Gerberg first set up a community outreach program for the University of California, Los Angeles
ethnomusicology department in 1998, and Jeff Titon and Maureen Loughran organized the first
applied conference, Invested in Community: Ethnomusicology and Musical Advocacy in 2003.
Books about Applied Ethnomusicology include Applied Ethnomusicology: Historical and
Contemporary Approaches (2010), Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology (2008), Music
Endangerment (2014), The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology (2015), and numerous
musical ethnographies, such as Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda (2006). Many
educational institutions include classes on topics related to Applied Ethnomusicology, and some
including faith-basedhave designed degree programs with an Applied focus (for example, Indiana
University, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Fuller Seminary, Liberty University,
and the Center for Excellence in World Arts). Others have found financial support for substantial
multiyear projects, such as Griffith Universitys Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: Toward
an Ecology of Musical Diversity.

Toward Theoretical Maturity

People involved in Applied Ethnomusicology have focused on practicality and human relationships,
often to the exclusion of developing or testing theories related to their work. Many see this as a
weakness, since a planactreflectplanact-again cycle would lead to broader understanding of
action contexts, improvement in reaching goals, and productive interaction with other scholars.
Applied ethnomusicology scholars have begun theorizing about their activities in three general
areas. First, they research existing ethnographic focuses in the field of ethnomusicology, such as
identity, power relationships, agency, change, and globalization. These categories of investigation
help collaborators understand social, political, environmental and other realities in communities.
Second, applied scholars work to effect positive change, so they draw on and contribute to theories
related to community development. These include participatory approaches, action research,
conflict resolution, religious studies, sustainability, and other disciplines. Third, applied goals that
include physical and emotional well-being draw on research and theories related to health, body
brain systems, performance, experience, and phenomenology. Scholars have also begun to place
renewed emphases on early ethnomusicological analyses of musical genre, melody, rhythm,
movement, vocal or instrumental timbre, ecstasy, cognitive frames, and the like. Each of these
lenses shed light on polysemic signs unique to individuals, communities, or nations that could
support or block the goals of planned artistic engagement. Fourth, Klisala Harrison (2014) has
begun foundational philosophical discussions on how various scholarly communities define
knowledge and good, and think about actions that connect the two.
More and more of the ethnomusicologists in influential academic positions see effecting
positive social change as an intrinsic feature of their profession. Their publications, presentations,
and students are penetrating the field of ethnomusicology and its connected communities. The idea,
then, of Applied Ethnomusicology will likely continue long into the future. Challenges to this
growth include the increasing incidence of thorny ethical issues that accompany any explicit
attempt to do good; institutional and financial systems that still reward word-based formal
analyses over projects requiring deep and lasting human relationships outside the academy; applied
positions divorced from robust theory and without payment for time spent on research and
reflection; and the lack of projects common to sub-groups devoted to medicine, minorities, public
policy, careers outside of academia, community thriving, and other concerns. Applied
Ethnomusicology could become a sub-disciplinary hub that promotes, organizes reflection on and
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theorization of ethnomusicologists and others integration of ethnomusicology in efforts to increase

knowledge and improve peoples lives.

Brian Schrag
SIL International

See Also: Medical Ethnomusicology; Public Sector Ethnomusicology; Advocacy; Endangered

Musics; Indigenous Rights; Local Music (revalorization and revival)

Further Readings
Barz, Gregory. Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Dirksen, Rebecca. Reconsidering Theory and Practice in Ethnomusicology: Applying, Engaging,
and Advocating Beyond Academia. Ethnomusicology Review 17 (2012).
http://ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/journal/volume/17/piece/602. Accessed November 17
2014.
Grant, Catherine. Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014.
Harrison, Klisala. Epistemologies of Applied Ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicology, v.56/3 (2012).
Harrison, Klisala Harrison and Svanibor Pettan, eds. Applied Ethnomusicology: Historical and
Contemporary Approaches. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010.
Koen, Benjamin D., Ed. Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008.
Merriam, Alan P. The Anthropology of Music. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964.
Titon, Jeff Todd and Svanibor Pettan, Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Titon, Jeff Todd. www.SustainableMusic.blogspot.com.