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Nettl's Elephant

Nettl's Elephant

Published by: University of Illinois Press

Digital download
9780252090233
Published: October 2010

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

From one of the most lauded scholars in ethnomusicology comes this enlightening and highly personal narrative on the evolution and current state of the field of ethnomusicology. Surveying the field he helped establish, Bruno Nettl investigates how concepts such as evolution, geography, and history serve as catalysts for advancing ethnomusicological methods and perspectives. This entertaining collection covers Nettl's scholarly interests ranging from Native American to Mediterranean to Middle Eastern contexts while laying out the pivotal moments of the field and conversations with the giants of its past. Nettl moves from reflections on the history of ethnomusicology to evaluations of the principal organizations in the field, interspersing those broader discussions with shorter essays focusing on neglected literature and personal experiences.

Cover

Title Page

Contents

Foreword: ANTHONY SEEGER

Introduction: Histories, Narratives, Sources

I: Central Issues in a Grand History

1. The Seminal Eighties: Historical Musicology and Ethnomusicology

2. Look at It Another Way: Alternative Views of the History

3. Speaking of World Music: Then and Now

4. A Tradition of Self-Critique: For Beverly Diamond

5. Revisiting Comparison, Comparative Study, and Comparative Musicology

II: In the Academy

6. Ethno among the Ologies

7. On the Concept of Evolution in the History of Ethnomusicology

8. The Music of Anthropology

III. Celebrating Our Principal Organizations

9. The IFMC/ICTM and the Development of Ethnomusicology in the United States

10. Arrows and Circles: Fifty Years of the ICTM and the Study of Traditional Music

11. We're on teh Map: Reflections on the Society for Ethnomusicology in 1955 and 2005

IV: A Collage of Commentary

12. Recalling Some Neglected Classics in Musical Geography: For Tullia Magrini

13. Minorities in Ethnomusicology: A Meditation on Experience in Three Cultures

14. Riding the Warhorses: On the Ethnomusicology of Canons

15. A Stranger Here?: Free Associations around Kurt Weil

16. Music—What's That? Commenting on a Book by Carl Dahlhaus and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht

References

Index

Bruno Nettl is professor emeritus of music and anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the author of The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-One Issues and Concepts and many other books.

"A brilliant collection by a renowned author who has for decades shaped thinking in the field on which he reflects in these essays. . . . No other author could write with such authority and personal experience about ethnomusicology."--from the foreword by Anthony Seeger, author of Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People

"This compelling new collection of essays by Bruno Nettl, the master chronicler of the discipline of ethnomusicology, should be regarded as essential reading for ethnomusicologists of all stripes, from neophyte graduate students to senior scholars. Erudite yet accessible, always insightful, beautifully written, and laced with Nettl's signature touches of wit and humor, it represents an important addition to the historiography of our field by the scholar who knows it best."--Michael Bakan, author of World Music: Traditions and Transformations