MUSI 2101

Exclusion(s): Unavailable to students with credit for MUSI201, ETHM201 or FINA201. An introduction to the discipline of ethnomusicology, this course focuses on the issues confronting those who study music across cultures. Through the course, students discover the ways in which sounds, settings and significances interlock in diverse musical cultures. Through case studies and the major course assignment, students discover how fieldwork is done, including the process of participant observation, ethnographic interviewing, thick description and research ethics. In the process, broader issues in ethnomusicology are studied, such as movement across distances (e.g., migration), commercial and economic issues (e.g., recordings, tourism), ritual (e.g., religion, life cycle ceremonies) and politics (e.g., nationalism, protest). Each of these issues is discussed theoretically and then examined in several specific (and different) case studies involving music cultures from around the world.