MUS 104: Introduction to World Music and Ethnomusicology - Quiz 2 Comprehensive Vocabulary Review

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the nature, history, theories, methodologies, gender dynamics, and migration contexts of ethnomusicology based on MUS 104 lecture notes and assigned readings.

Ethnomusicology

Broadly defined as a field of study combining the methods and concerns of anthropology with the study of music, grounded in observation of and participation in musical events; also defined by Alan Merriam as 'the study of music in culture.'

Jaap Kunst

The Dutch scholar who is credited with coining the term 'ethnomusicology' in his 1955 book of the same title (Ethno-musicology).

Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft (Comparative Musicology)

An early academic discipline developed by 1885 encompassing scholars such as Philipp Spitta, Friedrich Chrysander, and Guido Adler, dedicated to the cross-cultural comparison and classification of world musics and folksongs.

Guido Adler (1855–1941)

Musicologist who provided the earliest written definition of comparative musicology in 1885 as the comparison of musical works—especially folksongs—of the earth's peoples for ethnographical purposes and their morphological classification.

Carl Stumpf

Founder of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv at the Psychological Institute of Berlin University, who served as its first director from 1900 to 1905.

Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv

An audio archive founded in 1901 at the University of Berlin's Institute of Psychology, serving as a central institutional hub for the collection and comparative analysis of early wax cylinder field recordings.

Erich Moritz von Hornbostel

Prominent scholar who served as the director of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv from 1905 to 1933 and formulated systematic approaches to transcribing non-Western musical sounds.

Hornbostel Paradigm

The methodological practice of applying philological analysis to sound recordings by treating them as fixed 'texts,' using modified European musical notation to represent them objectively for comparison.

Ethnography

A detailed descriptive account of a people, produced through face-to-face observation of and direct participation in everyday life and musical performance.

Ethnology

The science dealing with the origin, distribution, relations, and characteristics of human racial and cultural groups; a branch of anthropology focused on the comparative and analytical study of cultures.

Cent System

A logarithmic measurement system for musical intervals devised by philologist Alexander Ellis, which proved that the world's diverse tonal systems cannot be explained by a single, universal physical law.

Béla Bartók (1881–1945)

Hungarian composer and pioneer ethnomusicologist who used phonograph cylinders to make field recordings of folk music (such as Romanian Folk Dances), transcribing them with new notation and integrating folk idioms into his compositions.

Alan Lomax (1915–2002)

American ethnomusicologist, folklorist, and oral historian renowned for extensive 20th-century field recordings, concerts, and broadcasts that helped ignite the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s.

John Lomax

American folklorist who recorded blues musician Leadbelly at Louisiana's Angola Prison Farm in 1933 using portable sound recording equipment.

Thomas Edison (1847–1931)

American inventor and businessman credited with developing the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the incandescent electric light bulb, as well as introducing mass-production and teamwork principles to invention.

Wiener Archiv-Phonograph

A specialized recording apparatus developed at the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv and first deployed for ethnomusicological field research in 1901 to capture audio onto wax discs.

Frances Densmore (1867–1957)

American anthropologist and ethnographer from Red Wing, Minnesota, celebrated for her extensive cylinder recordings of Native American music, including sessions with Dakota and Blackfoot tribal members such as Mountain Chief in 1916.

Columbia Graphophone (Type AT)

The cylinder recording machine used by Frances Densmore during her field studies to document Native American traditional music.

Mantle Hood's Definition of Ethnomusicology

A definition framing ethnomusicology as a field of knowledge having as its object the investigation of the art of music as a physical, psychological, aesthetic, and cultural phenomenon.

Bi-Musicality

A foundational research methodology formulated by Mantle Hood requiring ethnomusicologists to achieve performance competence in the musical tradition under study through participant-observation.

Merriam's Tripartite Model

Alan Merriam's analytical framework for studying music in and as culture, structured into three interrelated levels: Conceptualization about Music, Behavior in Relation to Music, and Analysis of Music's Sounds.

Emic Perspective

An insider's viewpoint, derived from linguistics ('phonemic'), that analyzes musical thought and behavior according to the culture-specific, indigenous concepts and definitions of the community itself.

Etic Perspective

An outsider's viewpoint, derived from linguistics ('phonetic'), which evaluates and classifies musical phenomena according to universal categories and objective criteria established by an external researcher.

Ethnocentrism

The evaluative bias of interpreting the cultural practices of others solely through the standards of one's own culture, historically reflected in early musicologists dismissing foreign musics as 'simple,' 'crude,' or 'primitive.'

Kinesics

The study of body movement, posture, and non-verbal gesture, recognized as a crucial contextual level for analyzing how musicians and participants act in performance.

Nettl's Five Points of Relative Agreement

The core consensus Bruno Nettl identifies among ethnomusicologists: (1) universality vs. infinite variety of musics, (2) in-depth fieldwork, (3) transcription and notation for analysis, (4) music as a product of culture, and (5) interest in musical change and history.

Seeger Solution

Mantle Hood's term for addressing notation challenges through automated, machine-driven objective transcription, such as the melograph developed by Charles Seeger.

Hipkins Solution

Mantle Hood's term for adopting an indigenous culture's own notation or mnemonic system to determine what elements the culture's musicians deem fundamentally essential.

Laban Solution

Mantle Hood's term for transcribing acoustic musical sound simultaneously with the physical movements, stance, and dance of the performers using notation systems like Labanotation.

Variant Studies

A historical research method in ethnomusicology that involves analyzing dozens or hundreds of different versions of a single piece across time and space to reconstruct its historical lineage.

Paradigm (Stone)

In Ruth Stone's framework, the shared understandings, patterns, and exemplars that constitute the theoretical lens through which researchers within a scientific community carry out inquiry.

Fieldwork (Stone)

The prolonged experiential immersion of an ethnomusicologist within a community's daily life and musical events, typically spanning 8 to 12 months for doctoral research.

Theory (Stone)

An explanatory conceptual structure that elucidates why musical phenomena happen and establishes abstract relationships to generate new horizons of knowledge, distinct from a descriptive statement.

Descriptive Statement

An account that refers strictly to specific empirical occurrences within a particular, bound space-time context without formulating abstract explanatory relationships.

Grounded Theory

A form of theoretical development in ethnomusicology wherein conceptual models and analytical frameworks are derived inductively and remain closely tied to observed field data.

Indigenous Theories

The native conceptual systems, philosophies, and explanations of musical structure, aesthetic value, and performance meaning formulated by the culture bearers and musicians themselves.

Research Question

A broad, encompassing, and abstract question (such as 'How do musicians make music together?') that guides open-ended ethnomusicological inquiry, contrasted with a bounded scientific hypothesis.

Units of Analysis

The focal entities selected by an ethnomusicologist for systematic investigation, including a song, musical event, musical process, repertory, individual performer, community, or performance genre.

Hain Ceremony

A male-dominated initiation ceremony among the Selk'Nam of Tierra del Fuego that uses spirit masks, dancing, and music to frighten women and children into submission, justified by myths of men usurping power from women.

Karökö Flutes

Sacred phallic flutes played exclusively by Mundurucú men of the Amazon to regulate social stability and assert male supremacy, sustained by myths asserting they were originally discovered by women.

Lua Ceremony

A gender-segregated 'second burial' rite performed by women of the Kassena-Nankani in Ghana, wherein men are excluded while women perform lua-le songs and wailing to achieve spiritual transcendence and renegotiate social standing.

Tayil

A sacred lineage vocal performance practiced exclusively by Mapuche women in Andean Argentina that communicates with ancestors, providing women with institutionalized spiritual authority and decision-making power.

D.C. Area Feminist Chorus

A musical organization established in Washington, D.C. to perform non-patriarchal women's music and foster a supportive community, which split due to ideological tensions between hierarchical Western conducting and egalitarian consensus decision-making.

Diaspora

The dispersion of a population from an original homeland (derived from the Greek term for 'dispersion'), defined by complex ties of memory, nostalgia, and politics linking migrants to the homeland as well as to lateral diasporic communities.

Push vs. Pull Factors

A migration dynamic distinguishing voluntary migration driven by attractive economic or social opportunities ('pull' factors) from forced migration driven by external crises such as war, famine, or persecution ('push' factors).

Expression System vs. Content System

Adelaida Reyes Schramm's theoretical framework distinguishing musical surface elements and instrumentation (Expression System) from underlying cultural significance, identity, and textual meanings (Content System).

Ballad

A strophic narrative song that tells a story, transplanted by British and Scottish immigrants into the Appalachian mountains of Virginia and Kentucky where it survived long after disappearing in the British Isles.

Barbara Allen

A widely preserved Anglo-Scottish ballad in North America, believed to have originated as a veiled parody mocking Barbara Villiers, the notorious mistress of King Charles II who died in 1680.

Gamsaan

A Cantonese term meaning 'Gold Mountain,' used by 19th-century Chinese immigrants to describe California and the United States as an economic destination.

Muk'yu

A traditional narrative folksong genre from southeastern China, traditionally used to recite stories and personal migration experiences in performance.

Ng baak loi gimsaan (Uncle Ng Comes to the Gold Mountain)

A five-part autobiographical Chinese muk'yu song documenting Uncle Ng's journey through five episodes: Introduction, Life in Toison, Arriving in Hong Kong, Life in the United States, and Imagined Return to Toison.

Pham Duy

A major Vietnamese composer who studied in Paris (1954–1955), immigrated to Midway City, California following the fall of Saigon in 1975, and composed 'refugee songs' and 'prisoners' songs' detailing migration trauma.

Sad Songs and Love Songs (Vietnamese Refugee Camps)

Sentimental, pre-1975 Vietnamese songs sung privately by refugees in Hong Kong and Philippine transit camps, which had been banned by the Communist regime and functioned as an expression of political ideology and active resistance.