ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AND THE CULTURE INDUSTRIES

BRITISH FORUM FOR ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

ANNUAL ONE-DAY CONFERENCE

in association with

THE CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY MUSIC CULTURES,

GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE, LONDON

10th NOVEMBER 2007

The autumn one-day conference of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology will be held at Goldsmiths

College, University of London, on Saturday 10th November 2007. The theme for the day will be

‘Ethnomusicology and the Culture Industries’.

Of all the various components of the music studies field, ethnomusicology has perhaps the most longstanding

relationship with what have latterly become known as the ‘culture industries’. This relationship

stretches back to at least 1901, when the Gramophone Company’s Fred Gaisberg made a pioneering

recording trip to India. In those early days the representatives of record companies sometimes

functioned themselves as fieldworkers, and often preceded scholars in their engagement with and

chronicling of particular music cultures. While the appropriation, commodification and dissemination of

these musics was initially viewed favourably, because of the access to unfamiliar sounds it easily

provided, the growing power of the record companies became seen as increasingly problematic. Alan

Lomax, for example, was particularly critical of the ‘one-way channel’ of media influence upon what he

conceived as ‘the integrity of cultural systems’. As recording and production costs decreased, however,

so local musicians were able to harness recording technologies for their own purposes, creating

‘cassette cultures’, for example (Manuel 1993), where issues of ownership and identity became more

complex, more fragmented, and more negotiable than the model of the hegemonic national or

multinational corporation might suggest. This trend has continued over the last few decades, as the

digital revolution and the internet have further enhanced the possibilities available to musicians

performing traditional music, both in terms of their abilities to market themselves and their work and in

the possibilities offered for musical influence and/or collaboration, again subverting the overarching

influence of the culture industries. Additionally, the rise of ‘World Music’ as a marketing term, and the

bringing together of musicians from often very disparate cultures to create synthetic musical works, has

also challenged the methodological and conceptual bases upon which ethnomusicology has long been

founded, and has caused ethnomusicologists to reconsider the nature and scope of what they do and

how they account for it.

These wide-ranging ideas suggest a variety of possible articulations between ethnomusicology and the

culture industries, of which the following broadly-conceived questions are offered merely as starting

points:

· How has the work of ‘traditional’ musicians been influenced by national or multinational

corporations, and what effects have such influences had upon musical outcomes?

· How have such musicians adopted the technology underpinning mass media for their own

enterprises, and to what ends has this technology been put?

· What sort of new musical collaborations have arisen in the service of ‘World Music’, how have

such collaborations been marketed, and what new insights can be gained from studying them?

Indeed, is the term ‘World Music’ still relevant, and if not, in what ways has it been superseded?

· How is the latest communications technology, particularly file sharing, digital downloads, and

internet sites such as MySpace and YouTube, changing patterns of musical behaviour in respect

of the relationship between traditional music makers, their audiences, and the culture industries?

· How are ethnomusicologists adapting to the changing relationships between musicians and the

culture industries, and what are the consequences of such changes for the theories and

methodologies they employ?

Potential contributors are invited to submit abstracts of up to 300 words to the conference convenor,

Stephen Cottrell, preferably by email at:

s.cottrell@gold.ac.uk

or by post to:

Dr Stephen Cottrell

Department of Music

Goldsmiths College

Lewisham Way

New Cross

London

SE14 6NW

The deadline for submissions is July 30th 2007, and contributors will be advised by late August.

Further information on the conference will be uploaded on the BFE website as it becomes available: