This edited volume offers a compelling model for the study of complex sociocultural, political, and economic processes that shape music cultures. The editors establish a clear methodological framework that builds on the metaphor of music cultures as ecosystems and that acts on a perceived imperative to understand and participate effectively in community-led efforts toward revitalization, innovation, and sustainability. The chapter contributions offer insightful case studies particularly for applied work in ethnomusicology and folklore, raising important questions about the roles of researchers as they inevitably become part of the music cultures that they research. The case studies also variously foreground the tensions and opportunities of globalization, new media and technology, and commodification, which are understood as influential forces in even the most hyper-local musical-cultural ecosystems. This committedly globalized articulation of the ecosystem metaphor builds constructively upon earlier theoretical models in both ethnomusicology and folklore studies, contributing a useful approach specifically for analyzing the health of musical-cultural ecosystems.
In developing the ecology metaphor, the editors present an analytical framework of five domains crucial to the functionality of musical-cultural ecosystems: systems of learning music; musicians and communities; contexts and structures; regulations and infrastructure; and media and the music industry. These domains are recognized to be overlapping and dynamic in their interrelation, and any particular aspect of a music culture will likely be operative across multiple domains. For instance, the role of government radio broadcasts in constructing the social prestige of Hindustani classical music in northern India (discussed in chapter 4) must be considered in the domain of regulations and infrastructures and media and industry, as well as musicians and communities and systems of learning. The role of audiovisual technology in the transmission and circulation of Yawulyu/Awelye songs in central Australia (discussed in chapter 5) likewise exemplifies the necessity of multi-domain analysis. Similarly, the motivating pressures of national and transnational political-economic forces toward the institutionalization of mariachi music aligns clearly with the editors’ emphasis on understanding music cultures as whole ecosystems characterized by connectivity, dynamism, and permeability.
The volume’s theoretical and analytical consistency is bolstered by its clear organizational structure. Each chapter follows the same format, giving a concise background of the music culture at hand before engaging each of the five domains individually and offering interpretations on the salience of each of these domains to the future sustainability of the musical-cultural ecosystem. It should be noted that the majority of the case studies presented are not understood to be in imminent threat of disappearance, though they each face particular challenges to sustainability. The nine case studies (presented in chapters 3 through 11) are, in turn: Southern Ewe dance-drumming (of Ghana), Hindustani classical music (of northern India), Central Australian yawulyu/awelye (an indigenous women’s singing tradition), Balinese gamelan, Western opera (and its globalized forms), Amami shima-uta (vernacular songs from the Amami islands of Japan), Korean samul nori (an emerging Korean percussion tradition), Mexican mariachi (and its divergent iterations across different communities), and Vietnamese ca trù (a vocal music of north and central Vietnam). These case studies are based on extensive long-term research projects, and each chapter demonstrates substantial depth of knowledge and interpretive finesse. Moreover, because they all share the same sophisticated structure (following the five domains), each chapter can easily be read in conversation with the others. Thus, the book can be approached in a number of ways, by reading through a case study on its own or, alternatively, by isolating any of the five domains and tracing its particular manifestation across a diversity of research contexts. It is easy, for instance, to track the domain of media and the music industry across all of these diverse contexts and to develop an understanding of how mediatization (or the lack thereof) has affected the sustainability of distinct musical practices. The flexibility in reading afforded by the book’s organizational structure offers pedagogical advantages and adds to its potential as a useful text in both undergraduate and graduate courses in relevant area studies as well as in research methods.
The book is also supplemented by a companion website providing audio, video, and additional reading lists relevant to each case study. This multi-media approach allows readers to engage directly with specific glossaries, bibliographies, and methodological explanations that, while relevant to the specific research project of the corresponding chapter, are relatively extraneous to the organizing principles of the volume itself. These supplemental materials would be valuable for in-depth research into the case studies and speak to the expansive knowledge and research experience that the authors bring to each chapter.
While musical-cultural ecosystem health is analyzed in great detail, the volume does little to address the interrelation of musical practices and environmental health, something that is at least implied with the term ecology. Although productive in clarifying the constellation of sociocultural forces and agents involved in the sustainability of music cultures, the ecological perspective promised in the subtitle and developed in the first two chapters is purely metaphorical and unconcerned with specific ecological methodologies or theoretical frameworks. In this sense the book complements but is not in direct dialogue with interdisciplinary research that engages with ecology and environmental studies, such as A Song to Save the Salish Sea (Pedelty 2016) and Current Directions in Ecomusicology (Allen and Dawe 2016), two volumes published in the same year as Sustainable Futures. Despite its limited engagement with issues of environmental sustainability, this volume stands as an excellent work of high scholarly integrity. The editors and contributors successfully address many topics of immediate relevance to applied ethnomusicology and folklore studies with an impressive methodological cohesion and theoretical coherency.
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[Review length: 923 words • Review posted on August 20, 2020]