Becoming an Ethnomusicologist centers on the life and education of the author, Bruno Nettl, a well-known ethnomusicologist. Focusing on eleven individuals who influenced him significantly, it follows their roles through his career from his childhood in Czechoslovakia and his family's forced departure in 1939 to his education in the United States and career as a scholar. These essays contribute to an understanding of the life of Jewish and German minorities in Bohemia through the first half of the 20th century, of pre-World War II Prague, of the experience of intellectual and academic refugees in the United States during and after World War II, and of the early development of ethnomusicology as a field of study. This work opens with the author's exploration of the careers of his father, the well-known music historian Paul Nettl, and his mother, Gertrud Nettl, a pianist and piano teacher. From his boyhood in Prague, Nettl provides insights into his own evolution as a musicologist.He discusses the rise of the discipline of ethnomusicology, from the studies of Native American music by his mentor George Herzog to the work of linguist C. F. Voegelin and folklorist Stith Thompson.He also looks back on the contribution and input of his principal consultants in his fieldwork on Native American, Iranian, and Indian music. These essays contribute significantly to the history of musicology, containing the longest--to date--treatments of the contributions of the distinguished scholars Paul Nettl and George Herzog. This work will interest students and scholars of immigration history, Native American culture, and the history of ethnomusicology itself.

This book traces the personalities and contributions of eleven individuals who influenced the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl. The book also discusses the evolution and rise of the discipline of ethnomusicology.

The tradition of intensive fieldwork by a single anthropologist in one area has been challenged by new emphasis on studying historical patterns, wider regions, and global networks. Some anthropologists have started their careers from the new vantage point, amidst a chorus of claims for innovative methodologies. Others have lived through these changes of perspective and are able to reflect on them, while re-evaluating the place of fieldwork within the broader aims of general anthropology. This book explores these transformations of world view and approach as they have been experienced by anthropological colleagues, a number of whom began their work very much in the earlier tradition. They cover experiences of field research in Africa, Papua New Guinea, South America, Central and South Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, Japan and China. Constant through the chapters is a distinctively qualitative empirical approach, once associated with the village but now being developed in relation to large-scale or dispersed communities.

Explaining that musicality is an essential touchstone of the human experience, a concise introduction to the study of the nature of music, its community and its cultural values explains the diverse work of today's ethnomusicologists and how researchers apply anthropological and other social disciplines to studies of human and cultural behaviors. Original.

'Performing Ethnomusicology' is the first book to deal exclusively with creating, teaching, & contextualizing academic world music performing ensembles. 16 essays discuss the problems of public performance & the pragmatics of pedagogy & learning processes.