Immediately what strikes me upon reading the first issue of Ethnomusicology is the rapid growth of the recipients of the journal. After the first small meeting in spring of 1953 the initial general letter mailed to interested parties was only sent out to around seventy people. The first publication was then sent out in Dec. 1953, a few short months later, targeting around 300 recipients. This instant strong response proved to be very promising for the instatement of a regular newsletter. At the same time, I wonder how close the journal came to not surviving. According to the first issue, the journal was given funding for no more than three issues, and then had to garner financial contributions from new members to sustain itself. Despite the strong interest, ethnomusicology does not appear to be the most profitable occupation, so it seems feasible that the publication might have died off quickly had it not received enough financial support. Yet nearly 60 years later it is still going strong, which seems promising to the field of ethnomusicology in general.
From reading the first few issues at first I also thought I was maybe missing part of the journal because there didn’t seem to be any sort of real ethnographic material. There was a discussion of planned ventures, yet not as much academic material presented for examination. The focus of the journal seemed to veer more towards serving as a support system and exchange of ideas for ethnomusicologists of all levels of experience. It almost felts as though these were pioneers of a new country breaking off from their motherland of the American Society of Comparative Musicology. There was an exciting feel to the tone of the initial issues of a spark of a new beginning as the members transitioned from the field of comparative musicology more into the sect of ethnomusicology. There was a clear effort and focus towards fleshing out the new discipline and establishing exchanges and basic guidelines. For example, what appears to me to be the first real article or essay that appears in the journal wasn’t printed until the seventh issue. This article is then entitled “On The Subject of Ethno-Musicology” by Willard Rhodes, further discussing the new discipline itself rather than presenting a specific case study of work being done. There was clear excitement over this new branch of study and thus much discussion resulting from it.
I also find it interesting the emphasis placed on the gathering of bibliographies, both from various sources as well as bibliographies of the work done by individuals in their entirety. This practice of honoring individual ethnomusicologists and their lifework serves an educational purpose as well as an inspirational model for the readers to aspire to. Clearly it is essential to the field to have a record of past sources and studies to learn from and refer to. However, it also helps validate and highlight the importance of exemplary work done by dedicated ethnomusicologists, further supporting the efforts being made to forge this new branch of study.
Nice post. There certainly was a sense of charting new ground and breaking away from the old ways in these early editions. I'm not sure how close ethnomusicology came to not surviving as such. That is a very interesting question. Thank goodness it did! Good observation noting the tendency to collect bibliographies. Imagine how hard it would have been, in a discipline that was barely discipline, to locate relevant sources? No databases. Yikes. These must have been met with great joy and interest.
ReplyDeleteBradley
The extremely limited circulation during the initial years is a good detail. Perhaps SEM functioned more like a bulletin than a proper journal until "the bibliographic database" could be started.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many early ethnomusicologists were in the "ethnomusicology" camp (as opposed to comparative musicology) from the beginning. Fieldwork takes a long time. I'm sure it took these initial contributors to SEM a few years to use their new framework and methodology in practice--the case studies that spawned from this work couldn't begin to show up until the late 50s at the very least.
- A