Conceived over drinks by Margaret Sarkissian and Ted Solís at the 2006 annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Living Ethnomusicology: Paths and Practices is the first ethnography to be published about ethnomusicologists. The idea was simple: interview (i.e., in a sense conduct the kind of fieldwork ethnomusicologists typically do) fifty individuals who either self-identify or, in a few cases, the authors identified, as ethnomusicologists.
In the introduction, Solís suggests that there was no specific rhyme or reason as to whom they interviewed, other than that they wished to collect narratives that reflected a broad range of those trained in and/or practicing ethnomusicology. Consequently, their interlocutors (the term the authors use to describe those they interviewed) were born between the late 1920s and late 1980s and are fairly balanced in terms of gender. And, while approximately two-thirds of those interviewed are American, ethnomusicologists from seventeen other countries are also represented. Equally important for the book’s methodology and purpose is the fact that Sarkissian and Solís wished to capture the stories of those who chose to work as professors (tenured and untenured), those attempting to gain entry into the professoriate (contingent faculty members, one graduate and one undergraduate student), as well as those who chose alternate career paths (using their ethnomusicology skills as they work in libraries, archives, and arts management; publish, compose, and perform; conduct independent research; and work in museums and record companies). While certain “star” names in the discipline were interviewed, many more of the most important/well-known names in the field were not, as the authors wanted the book to represent the field in the broadest sense rather than simply being a history/ethnography of the field’s biggest names. It is unfortunate that only a couple of the ethnomusicologists interviewed work with popular music, and none of them specialize in black or white English-language popular music in the United States, Canada, or Western Europe, thereby reinforcing the idea that ethnomusicology is still primarily about studying the “other.”
Most of the interviews were conducted between 2006 and 2010. In 2016 the authors asked those they had previously interviewed to answer two questions by email: (1) to reflect on how they see themselves in terms of the word/discipline/field of ethnomusicology and (2) “how does the field…relate” to the self-image they have of themselves as ethnomusicologists?
The authors have edited their interviews so as to present each interlocutor’s narrative into two large sections. The first section, titled “Early Life and Influences,” takes each person’s narrative up to the beginning of their college years. The second section, “Career Trajectories,” picks up each interviewee’s narrative through graduate studies and the post-graduate building of their careers. Each of these sections is approximately 175 pages in length. The third and concluding section, “Self-Positioning in and Reflections on the Field,” is comprised of the interviewees’ responses to the emails Sarkissian and Solís sent out in 2016. These reflections provide a wide-ranging “state of the union” in terms of what ethnomusicologists of varying stripes think about the current shape of the field/discipline. While only fifty pages in length, it is this last section that I found to be the most interesting.
While the first two sections (totalling over 350 pages!) certainly provide the reader with a number of interesting stories, ultimately, after a while they begin to feel redundant. The details are obviously unique to each individual’s story, but many of the patterns that emerge in terms of finding out about ethnomusicology, engagement in the “doing” of ethnomusicology, and pursuing one’s career are similar enough to make the reader wish that the authors had been more selective in terms of which narratives to include or, perhaps, had taken the content of the interviews and constructed a monograph that would have ferreted out the various patterns that emerge and that could have been illustrated with judiciously chosen quotations from the interviews.
Despite this criticism, there is much of interest here, particularly in the observations a number of the interviewees make in the final section of book. John Bailey points out that the type of fieldwork once considered the sine qua non of the discipline is much more difficult and often much more dangerous to do than it was fifty years ago. Gage Averill notes that issues of social differentiation and contestation have become hegemonic over the course of his career, while Judith Becker correctly asserts that the distinction between musicology and ethnomusicology is not nearly as clear as it was even thirty years ago.
Many of Sarkissian’s and Solis’s interlocutors stress that there are more Ph.Ds. than there are academic jobs. Several noted that 70% of university faculty in the US are now contingent rather than tenured. To that end, Virginia Gorlinski argues that the curriculum in ethnomusicology programs should be expanded to include courses in music administration, marketing, and instructional technology in order to better prepare graduate students for non-professorial careers.
Nihkil Dally suggests that it would be valuable if academics could learn to write in a way that laymen would appreciate, suggesting that ethnomusicologists could have a greater and more meaningful impact on the world. Veronica Doubleday feels the same way, stating that over the course of her career she feels less connected to the scholarly field as she desires to reach a broader audience.
There are many more astute observations in the last section, perhaps none more apropos than this from Regula Quereshi: “I look at ethnomusicology and it’s so damn white!” Quereshi goes on to suggest that perhaps this is one of the most important issues that the discipline needs to address.
Despite my criticism with regard to the length and redundancy of the some of the material in the first two sections, Living Ethnomusicology: Paths and Practices is ultimately an interesting and unique contribution to the discipline.
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[Review length: 965 words • Review posted on April 30, 2020]