To and From Ethnomusicology: Pathway for Knowing Music as a Pan-Human Phenomenon
9:00 Social time
9:30-10:00 Business
10:00-11:00 Presentation
SMTA General Meetings will be held online via Zoom. All members will receive a Zoom link to the meeting via email.
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About the presentation: Ethnomusicology has opened wide our ears and eyes to music as a critical component of human life everywhere in the world. It is a field that straddles the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences, and that provides us with opportunities to understand music as well as culture, and to know music as sound, behavior, and cultural meaning. It embraces anthropological approaches to the study of music as a reflection of the people who make it, whether in Ireland or India, Germany or Japan, Bali or Brazil, in formal and informal learning settings, and in conservatories, concert halls, clubs, or community centers.
We will delve into ethnomusicology and consider thoughts on music as a global reality, a phenomenon with both cognitive universals and culturally distinctive and genre-specific components. For teaching musicians (and all musicians who take seriously music as a pan-human expression), attention will be drawn to ways in which ethnomusicology calls for our engagement in music of “the West and the rest” of the world, so that we (and our students) might arrive at an understanding and valuing of music for its logic, intent, and beauty.
Bio: Patricia Shehan Campbell is Donald E. Peterson Professor of Music at the University of Washington, where she teaches courses at the interface of education and ethnomusicology. A singer and pianist, with studies of the Japanese koto, Celtic harp, Karnatic Indian mridangam, and Bulgarian and Wagogo song, she has lectured internationally on the pedagogy of world music cultures and children’s musical cultures.
She is the author of Lessons from the World (1991), Music in Cultural Context (1996), Songs in Their Heads (1998, 2010), Teaching Music Globally (2004), Musician and Teacher (2008), Music, Education, and Diversity: Bridging Cultures and Communities (2018), co-author of Music in Childhood (2017, 4 th edition) and Redefining Music Studies in an Age of Change (2017), co-editor of Oxford’s 28-volume Global Music Series (2004-2018), Oxford’s Global Music Cultures (2021), and The Oxford Handbook on Children’s Musical Cultures (2013).
Campbell is recipient of the 2012 Taiji Award and the 2017 Koizumi Prize for work on the preservation of traditional music through educational practice, and was designated the Senior Researcher in Music Education of the National Association for Music Education in 2002. Chair of the Advisory Board of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and educational consultant in the repatriation of Alan Lomax recordings to the American South, she is editor of the seven-volume series on World Music Pedagogy (2018) for practicing and prospective teachers.