Reconsidering the history of ethnomusicology from sound studies: Objects and contexts in field recordings in the first decades of research in ethnomusicology

Abstract

The article takes as its point of departure the current interest among ethnomusicologists in the new interdisciplinary field of sound studies, and offers a first glimpse of the historical paradoxes involved in that interest. In particular, it deals with the beginnings of compared musicology, until the 1930s, in Europe and the United States, and presents the conceptual (mainly textual) models that were established at the time, and which helped obscure the role of the first audio recording technologies in the definition of the ethnomusicological object. It also addresses the arguments on which the separation of field recordings from commercial recordings was based. Ultimately, the article advocates a reconsideration of the history of ethnomusicology from the standpoint of sound studies.