Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings draws from more than 60 ethnomusicologist field collections to provide users with primary source materials, including “audio field recordings, field notebooks, film footage, correspondence, educational recordings, and [other] ephemera,” as Sarah Holmes wrote for ccAdvisor. The content included offers a broad purview of indigenous music from around the world, spanning all continents. Users can peruse musical recordings and research ranging from Native American powwows, Assyrian songs, gamelan music from Indonesia, African American music, and Buddhist chants, among many other genres and locations. As Holmes astutely points out, “copyright is a delicate topic when dealing with indigenous communities, and the editors do a fine job of highlighting their commitment to repatriating materials to Native communities.”

Interacting with the interface is relatively straightforward. From the home page users may search content by “People,” “Field of Study,” and “Keywords,” with the option to “Browse by Region,” “Browse by Collection,” or “Browse by Media Type” available under the Content tab. The “Musical Instruments” section, which “furnishes a curated selection of instruments from 10 areas shown on a map,” and the “Image Gallery,” containing “a portfolio of fully searchable graphic images” are other notable channels for interacting with the database. Importantly, “the sound quality of the recordings is uniformly excellent,” and navigating through the tracks to create clips, which can be saved to “My Archive” is easy. In fact, Ethnomusicology is currently unmatched by other databases or digital products for what it offers. As Holmes asserted, it is “a rich, rewarding, expansive database,” which will be of use to students and scholars in education, art, anthropology, dance, religion, ritual, history, and gender studies.

This review is a summary of a longer review by Sarah Holmes, Northern Illinois University, originally published in ccAdvisor.org. Copyright © 2019 by The Charleston Company.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Ethnomusicology approaches the study of world music from various perspectives, including, but not limited to, anthropology, music, religion, spirituality, and dance. Scholars in this field are well served by this rich and comprehensive resource from AM, a collaboration with ethnomusicology archives from UCLA and the University of Washington that is truly global in coverage. Multiple points of access allow the user to browse by region, collection, and media type, or across all three. The database can be accessed across an institution’s entire network, and images may be printed, downloaded, or photocopied for educational purposes. Though sound files do not appear to be downloadable, they include educational, field, and studio recordings as well as interviews. There are a number of external links to websites, including the British Library Sounds, World and Traditional Dance, The American Musical Instrument Society, and BBC Documentaries. Music is a universal language, and studying its forms and practices around the world is made easier by this wide-ranging source. An excellent choice for academic collections supporting anthropology, music, and cultural studies.

AM has compiled 60 global field ethnomusicology collections with material spanning the mid-20th to the early 21st centuries, with especially strong representation of West African, North American, Southeast Asian, and Caribbean cultures. The selection of primary sources is stellar, and search functions are seamless. This is a bonanza of information for anyone interested in the study of world mu­sic cultures, particularly non-Western ones.