Ethnomusicology, for at least the last forty years, has been primarily an idiographic discipline. That is, ethnomusicologists' research has focused on the description of particular music systems and music cultures at the expense of either nomothetic (positing or discovering scientific laws) or comparative approaches. The practical effect of this focus on the singular and unique is that, while we share a vague and general sense that we are all using similar assumptions and methods in our studies of music all over the world, we have few comparative overviews of the results of our scholarship and even fewer if any general laws. These gaps define practice in a discipline that otherwise has improved significantly over this period in the breadth and depth of its coverage, the sophistication of its methods, and its grasp of the significance of music for human life.

This article represents a modest attempt to fill one of those gaps with respect to the topic of music learning and teaching, one of the myriad themes that have engaged ethnomusicologists during the past half century. Many of these themes arise from ethnomusicologists' deeply held belief that music is more than an art and an entertainment, but also is or may be an expression of culturally shared ideologies and world views, a social behavior that reinforces or challenges social structures and hierarchies, a political tool, a commodity with economic significance, a mode of healing and therapy, and many other things as well.¹ It follows from this view that music learning and teaching must play a crucial role not only in the absorption and transmission of technical and aesthetic knowledge, but in the creation and maintenance of the cultural, social, political, and economic systems in which these activities are embedded. In my view, the seminal work in this regard is Alan Merriam's 1964 The Anthropology of Music.² He was a leader in articulating and promulgating these now widely held ethnomusicological beliefs, captured in the now somewhat outdated phrase, "music as culture." In particular, he believed that the subject of learning was fundamental to understanding music cultures, and he devoted a chapter entitled "Learning" to his survey of the scope of the entire field as he was defining it.

My and most other ethnomusicologists' interest in this theme began during our field research, when we took music lessons with native teachers. We did this as a fundamental method, along with participant-observation at music events, interviewing, and audio and video recordings, for acquiring culturally situated knowledge of a music tradition. My research has focused for many years on Bulgarian folk and neotraditional music, a musical practice that I have characterized as "learned but not taught."³ Learning Bulgaria's intricate and virtuosic instrumental music and how to play it on homemade instruments such as the bagpipe (gaida) presented me with many fascinating musical and intellectual challenges, which I have documented elsewhere.⁴ My interest in music learning, inspired by fieldwork, was further stimulated at the Faculty of Music of the University of Toronto, where I taught from 1974 to 1987. Fearing that our undergraduate music-education majors were entering their profession with no tools at their disposal for dealing effectively or relevantly with the fascinating multicultural community in which they would work, I approached David Elliott about co-teaching a course on multicultural music education. Our work together provided one stimulus for his important book, Music Matters, which among many other things brings some of the insights of ethnomusicology to the field of music education, and inspired a few much more modest efforts of my own in this direction.⁵ I am returning here, then, to a theme that has engaged me in one way or another for much of my professional life.

This article provides preliminary answers to two basic questions: (1) to what extent has the theme of music learning and teaching also engaged other ethnomusicologists; and (2) what methods and approaches have they used to study it. As for the first, the evidence cuts both ways. For example, at the theoretical level, it does not seem to be a pervasive and recognized theme in ethnomusicologists' self-understanding of their work. For example, Mantle Hood's and Bruno Nettl's influential overviews of the field, published after Merriam's, omit the theme entirely, and at least one scholar, Mervyn McLean, complained a few years ago that it is not a well-studied aspect of non-Western music.⁶ The argument for the centrality of this topic to ethnomusicology is further compromised if one considers the 2000 membership directory of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and a recent survey of its members. In neither case were learning or teaching included in a list of "membership interests," nor were the related theoretical terms enculturation and socialization. "Transmission" is claimed as an interest of 37 of more than 1000 individual members, but I do not think the theme is hiding there, and "music education" seems to index interest in the teaching of "world music" at K-12 levels.

On the other hand, we can predict that it should have an extensive literature, given Merriam's identification of learning as a crucial element of music culture; ethnomusicologists' learning in situ of the traditions they study; and the relatively common practice of ethnomusicologists teaching performance ensembles in the colleges and universities at which they work. In fact, there is a large and significant literature on this topic, and the references in this article are just the tip of an iceberg of studies of this subject.⁷ As one measure of the importance of music learning and teaching to the field of ethnomusicology over the last quarter century, I examined 85 of the more than one hundred book-length, idiographic musical ethnographies published in English during that period. Musical ethnographies are defined here as monographic studies of single musical cultures, musical genres, or musicians that address some anthropological issues; only since 1978 have they been published regularly and in relatively large numbers. About half of the 85 (43 to be exact) make at least a modest mention of the topic and thus provide useful data for cross-cultural surveys such as this one. Ten of the 85 devote significant attention (a chapter or more) to the topic.⁸ An additional five of the 85 make music learning or teaching the central point of the monograph.⁹ The study of children's musical culture, where learning might be expected to be a central topic, is featured in only one monograph from this period;¹⁰ John Blacking's 1965 Venda Children's Song is the only important precursor outside this date range.¹¹ Based on this survey alone, I would conclude that a significant amount of attention to music learning and teaching has occurred in the field of ethnomusicology, though the survey confirms that it is only one of many themes attracting the attention of ethnomusicologists and one that can be and has been ignored in about half the book-length studies in this sample.

My second question concerns how the theme has been approached and studied in the ethnomusicological literature.¹² In the remainder of the article I present a taxonomy or classification of the basic approaches I found in my admittedly limited survey of the literature. This classification serves the goal of comparison. It proposes one way of understanding and collating particular learning and teaching practices in relation to a broad view of what we know about traditions around the world. At the highest level of organization, I argue that two basic foci characterize studies of music learning and teaching by ethnomusicologists: (1) the sociological aspects of music teaching and learning; and (2) the musical content and procedures associated with the learning and teaching of "the music sound itself." As I present my taxonomy, I also summarize the findings of a few studies of this important topic.

 

The Sociology of Music Teaching and Learning

The sociology of music learning and teaching concerns three main topics: (1) who learns music (and by extension who teaches it); (2) institutions and contexts for music learning; and (3) socialization and enculturation during music lessons and at performance events. The economics and politics of music learning, while they might have been the basis for some analysis in this area, have not developed as areas of discussion.

 

Who learns music (and who teaches it)

Societies have contrived six basic answers to the question of who learns music. First, it may be open to, and in some instances required of, everyone. Second, the social role of musician may be an ascribed status and access to music learning may be restricted by heredity. Third, music may be an acquired status but the complete achievement of the status may be restricted by notions of talent. Fourth, while in principle available to all, it may be understood to flourish in "musical families." Fifth, music and songs may be learned through contact with supernatural spirits and thus restricted to those who have such an ability. Sixth, social divisions, such as class, gender, age, race, or ethnicity, may limit access to certain types of music.

 

Music is open to (required of) all

Music is available for everyone to learn in egalitarian societies with little specialization of labor, where children's music making is an important childhood activity, where it is a required part of initiation into adulthood, and where it forms an obligatory part of adult socializing.¹³

Alan Merriam's 1967 The Ethnomusicology of the Flathead Indians provides an excellent description of male learning of powerful songs during their adolescent "vision quest." Each man needs such a song, and the only way to acquire one is in a vision, usually induced by sleep and nutritional deprivation, in which a spirit, in the form of an animal, approaches singing a song. As the animal gets closer and upon repeated hearings, the song eventually becomes clear to the vision-seeker, who can then use it throughout his life for good luck in many circumstances. Here is a story of an encounter with a song spirit outside the context of a vision quest.

There was a man who was out hunting. He was sneaking up on the game by sitting at a spot on the game trail when he heard somebody singing. He thought, 'there must be people around.' So he stood there and waited to see who was coming. Pretty soon a spike bull elk came out from the brush and told him, 'This is your song. If you really need this song, sing it.' It was a love song. So he didn't kill the spike, and never killed an elk again.¹⁴

Because every man must have such a song to be successful in life, love, and gambling, every man in this culture is not simply a musician or singer, but he must be a composer as well.

Among Albanians from the Lake Prespa area, singing at social occasions is an important way to show respect for the hosts and a crucial element of celebrations at weddings. "Guests are expected to express their happiness in the occasions being celebrated . . . through their singing and perhaps also dancing. . . . As an important means of asserting one family's respect for another, singing is regarded as a moral act."¹⁵ If youngsters showed no interest or ability in singing, parents would teach them a few songs, because "it was simply imperative that they be able to sing by the time that they were married."¹⁶

 

Music restricted by heredity (ascribed status)

When specialization of labor exists in a society and music is a service provided to a wealthy class of patrons or to prestigious rituals and ceremonies, music is often restricted by heredity and the role of musician is an ascribed status. For example, among the Hausa of Nigeria, the bori cult music is passed on from father to son through the "Hausa system of status ascription and patrilineal inheritance."¹⁷ Daniel Neuman has provided the most detailed treatment of this phenomenon in his study of North Indian classical music.¹⁸

This tradition requires a vocal or instrumental soloist, a melodic accompanist (sarangi player) for the vocal soloist, and a rhythmic accompanist (tabla player). Some vocal soloists come from "hereditary musician families whose members are mainly vocalists"; some come from families of musicians but not necessarily vocalists; and a few are nonhereditary musicians. Another group consists of women who belong to courtesan families, a category called tawaif. They come from a musical caste who have traditionally been accompanists on the sarangi. Instrumental soloists (players of sitar and sarod) are either born into a family of instrumentalists who "inherit the traditional repertoire and style of their ancestors" and are called khandani musicians or they are nonhereditary musicians, usually Hindu and often Brahmans, who are "adopted" as disciples by khandani families. "Whereas soloists come from a fairly wide variety of ethnic, caste, regional, and religious backgrounds, accompanists tend much more to be members of specific occupational groups."¹⁹ Both melodic accompanists and rhythmic accompanists "are associated by outsiders with dancing girls, tawaifs and brothels, and because of this association there is a stigma attached to being a sarangi or tabla player."²⁰

 

Music restricted by talent (acquired status)

In some stratified societies, music is believed to be a "talent" distributed differentially among the population. While music may in principle be available to all, especially all with enough money to pay for music lessons or born into the right social circumstances, the observed unequal distribution of skill, ability, and interest in music is often attributed to talent. Western culture provides perhaps the archetypal example of this view, and Henry Kingsbury has written a particularly rich study of how this central ideal is realized in the educational practices of an American music conservatory.²¹ Whereas the question of talent is not an issue for cultures in which everyone can or indeed must learn music, "conservatory life is about talent" and its assessment.²² In this culture, talent is conceived as being in people, and teachers and the juries at auditions and recitals are supposed to be able to "divine" this inner quality from the playing. They believe you either have it or you don't, and nothing can be done to change the situation. Kingsbury objects to this view, however, and argues instead that talent is in fact given to people in a social intercourse determined by the relative social and musical standing of the people making the assessments. He views statements about talent as "verbal performances" that have moral implications, since those judged to be talentless may cease to perform music.

 

Music flourishes in musical families

If talent is not invoked, then the unequal distribution of musical skill in a society is often explained as a function of the availability of musical experiences in childhood. In these cases, nonhereditary musical families provide ideal learning contexts for music and thus tend to perpetuate themselves and the traditions they embrace.²³ As Kostadin Varimezov, a famous Bulgarian bagpiper put it, "As a young family, my mother and father got together with other young families and danced and sang and he played kaval [wooden flute]. It entered my head that this was pleasant. That was the first spark."²⁴

 

Music originating in supernatural contact and dreams

In some societies, the source of music is attributed to supernatural contact and dreams, for example in Morocco.²⁵ In rare instances, such as the one Merriam reports for the Flathead Indians, every male in the society relies on such contact for power and a song as the sign and expression of that power. In what seems to be a more widespread practice, only certain individuals have the capacity to learn songs from supernatural sources. They become either the sole performers of such powerful music, or they teach others in society the songs they learn in dreams or ritualized moments of contact. The Shona of Zimbabwe, for example, have a repertoire of music for mbira (23-keyed plucked metallophone) used to attract the ancestors to spirit possession ceremonies. Since this is the ancestors' music, they often encourage learners and show them new pieces in dreams.²⁶ Among the Timbuku of Malawi, dreams are the source of "many of the vimbuza [healing ritual] songs that will be used to heat the vimbuza spirits and fuel the divination trance."²⁷ According to a Suya Amazonian Indian man named Takuti, witches pull sick men's spirits from them and take them to the birds, where the spirit hears their songs. "His health improves and he lives as before," except that he is said to be "a man without a spirit" and is viewed, like a composer, as a source of new songs that were heard while his spirit was among the birds. He then can teach these songs to others, when they request a new song.²⁸

 

Social limitations on the learning of music

In virtually every society, music may in some ways be available to all, but access to certain parts of the total repertoire are restricted by or at least associated with class, race, ethnicity, age, gender, occupational background, and aesthetic preference. In Japan, where music is taught in a guild-like system that preserves subtle differences in repertoire and performance style, membership in three different "schools" with "bitter rivalries" is linked to aristocratic, middle-class, and working-class status.²⁹ Gender is perhaps the most-reported social factor limiting access to music learning, since musical performance is often an important means of expressing and defining appropriate behaviors for men and women. In most cultures men and women have separate repertoires or must learn different singing and playing styles.³⁰

 

Transcending social limits on music learning

As traditional societies encounter modernity, aesthetic preference and changing cultural values are often cited as means for overcoming restrictions based on social categories. In Bulgaria, where women traditionally did not play musical instruments, a woman who chose, over her parents' objections, to play the bagpipe (gaida) because she was attracted to its sound is now the principal teacher of the instrument at the national conservatory devoted to folk instruments.³¹ Many African-American musicians, including the famous gospel song composer Thomas A. Dorsey, report switching from secular to religious music after they "saw the light." When many styles are available to choose from, jazz musicians cite a number of factors to explain their choice over blues, gospel, soul, rap, classical or other genres available to them, including "love at first sound," its artistic challenge, the opportunity for creativity, family and peer approval, and its function as a "symbol of rebellion" and a "rejection of black middle-class values."³²

 

Institutions and Contexts for Teaching and Learning Music

There are two basic approaches to learning music. One is active teaching that occurs in more or less formal, institutionalized settings such as apprenticeships, schools and conservatories, private music lessons, and rehearsals for rituals, ceremonies, festivals, concerts, competitions, and the performance of new compositions. The other, typical of children but by no means limited to them, is informal learning that consists of observing adults and older children making music and of self-tutoring made possible by music notation and recorded sound. The specific institutional contexts available in a society often reflect and depend on other social institutions, such as religious and initiation schools, and ideas about the importance of music and its centrality to social and cultural life. Where both formal and informal methods exist, the ranking and relative prestige of musicians may be based on the type of learning they engage in.³³

 

Formalized music training

Formalized music training seems to occur in societies where music is highly valued as an economic commodity, as a prestigious symbol of middle-class accomplishment, or as an indispensable component of rituals, ceremonies, and festivities. Music learning is formalized in five basic ways: (1) apprenticeships and guilds; (2) schools and conservatories; (3) private music instruction; (4) rehearsals of new or old compositions for ceremonies, festivals, and competitions; and (5) as a part of other forms of instruction such as religious and adult-initiation schools.

Apprenticeships and guilds are reported in many societies with professional musicians who need to restrict access to musical skill because it is their main source of income. Examples include West African music,³⁴ North Indian classical music,³⁵ Moroccan music,³⁶ and the Japanese iemoto (guild-like) system.³⁷ American conservatories have been the subject of two ethnographies.³⁸ The paying of private teachers is typical for Western music and affects some ethnic and popular traditions such as jazz and Latin music.³⁹ It also occurs in some traditional societies such as in Bali and Japan, where Joanna Pecore provides a rare accounting of the cost of such lessons.⁴⁰ Music is also learned in formal settings designed to impart other forms of cultural knowledge. The famous Egyptian singer Umm Kulthm learned the details of singing style in village religious schools devoted to teaching Qur'anic recitation.⁴¹ Adult-initiation schools in Africa and Oceania provide important contexts for the learning of new repertoire.⁴²

 

Informal music learning

Informal music learning among children in the absence of conscious efforts at instruction is probably the most common mode of music learning around the world. It occurs where music is an important aspect of children's socializing and also where children are encouraged to attend and participate in adult social gatherings. Many musicians continue this type of learning throughout their lives, but often this type of music learning precedes more formalized training, that is, the basic concepts and performance style underlying the repertoire are learned in this way before adult intervention and teaching begin.

Stith Bennett, in a case study of rock music, provides the most detailed sociological study of music that is "learned to a much greater extent than it is taught."⁴³ At the time of his study in the 1970s and in Colorado where he undertook it, no institutions existed to encourage learning this music, so those who wished to take on the identity of a rock musician either began with no musical knowledge or some knowledge gained through private lessons at a music store or in school classes devoted to Western classical music. Initial learning occurred primarily among peers who shared the goal of becoming rock musicians. Today, of course, specialized schools exist in Los Angeles and other places to teach rock music, and I imagine it will soon become a fixture in public education, if it hasn't already.

Without someone to show them how, rock musicians learn to make music together by talking about 'getting a group together,' by finding places to practice, by talking about instruments and equipment and acquiring what materials they consider necessary, by getting gigs, by gaining access to compositions and learning how to play them, and, most importantly, by ceaselessly assessing who and what 'sounds good'.⁴⁴

The steps on the way to learning to become a rock musician include acquiring one's first instrument (an economic barrier), finding others to play with (a social barrier), learning to copy songs by ear from recordings (an intellectual barrier), finding a place to practice (a sonic barrier), learning how sound systems and recordings studios operate, learning how to get gigs and interact with an audience and potential patrons, and learning "to distinguish my music from other people's music," that is, how to compose new songs.

 

Socialization and enculturation at performance events

Music lessons and performance events are also occasions for learning a variety of music-related behaviors as well as more general lessons about cultural knowledge and social behavior. For example, audience members at folk-music sessions in British pubs are socialized to listen attentively and not simply treat the music as background music. "Not to listen to someone singing in close proximity would have been akin to not listening to someone in direct conversation."⁴⁵ Among the Venda of South Africa, learning initiation songs and dances teaches important lessons about sex and reproduction and women's subordinate social status with respect to men.⁴⁶ When Aymara speakers of the Peruvian Andes compose and learn new songs for a competitive festival, they do so in rehearsal by suggesting new musical motifs that, if others like them, may evolve collectively into a full-fledged piece or simply be ignored, but not criticized, if others don't find them interesting. This egalitarian, nonverbal, nonconfrontational, undirected style of composition mirrors and expresses more general social practices and values.⁴⁷ Henry Kingsbury argues that the classical-music recital, with its focus on the performer isolated from an audience sitting in respectful silence, represents a ritualized enactment of "the conceptual split between the individual and collectivity" and is thus one means to enculturate its participants into the Euro-American "cult of the individual."⁴⁸

 

Learning the Music Sound Itself

Learning the details of music and musical performance has a number of dimensions that have received attention. Perhaps the most obvious one concerns the methods of learning and instruction. Other issues of importance include the age at which learning begins, facility and pace of learning and teaching, the attainment and assessment of different skill levels, the musical content, motor skills, the cognitive competence acquired, and even forgetting. The perceptual and cognitive dimensions of music learning so central to the literature in music education and the psychology of music remain relatively unexplored by ethnomusicologists.

 

Methods of Learning

Methods of learning can be divided, as above, between formal teaching methods and informal learning by observation and imitation. My survey of the literature suggests that informal methods have received more attention than formal ones perhaps because Western musical culture, the culture of the ethnographers, depends so heavily on formalized training, and so informal methods seem comparatively mysterious and in need of explanation and analysis. Of course, formal methods are no less mysterious and in need of demystification, and music conservatories in the United States and Asia (Thailand) have been the focus of book-length studies.⁴⁹

 

Formal Teaching

Studies of formalized instruction focus on memory aids such as oral mnemonic devices;⁵⁰ musical notation;⁵¹ the pace at which the teacher dispenses information;⁵² the importance of practice;⁵³ teaching psychology;⁵⁴ and the cost of instruction.⁵⁵

Oral notations or mnemonics are used as a teaching technique in most Asian classical musics. David Hughes analyses the psychological salience of these systems and describes his lessons on the Japanese flute used in Nôh drama. At the first lesson, he was taught to sing the melody with syllables (shôga). At the second and third, he sang the melody with syllables while learning the finger motions first on a closed fan and then on a flute. Only at the fourth lesson was he allowed to play the melody on the flute. "Playing the flute for that first time, 'thinking' the mnemonics as I did so, the melody seemed to come out naturally. . . . The fingers knew where to go, and the syllables continued to course through my mind."⁵⁶

Daniel Neuman provides one of the few extended ethnographic descriptions of practice and its cultural salience. As a means of assessing musical skill, North Indian master musicians, rather than commenting on a student's playing, examined their hands for the calluses and damaged fingernails that provided the physical evidence of hard, lengthy practice (riaz) on stringed instruments. Deformed hands were discussed more than accomplishment or virtuosity, which would, they believe, follow from dedicated practice. "The evidence for [the musician's] genius lies in this very rigor."⁵⁷

Detailed descriptions of actual teaching technique and teaching psychology are relatively rare. A Dagomba master drummer from Ghana explained how important teaching at a measured pace is to the future success of his students.⁵⁸ Patrick Halliwell's description of the teaching of the Japanese koto (plucked zither) is perhaps the most extended discussion of teaching techniques in a non-Western musical tradition, made all the more useful because he compares and contrasts the Japanese methods to Western methods of instruction. Western teaching methods, he claims, are based on the transmission of four components: (1) "texts" fixed in notation; (2) a formal, systemized theory about the underlying music system; (3) exercises designed to improve the technical and physical aspects of sound production; and (4) knowledge about the "interpretation," that is, performance subtleties, of musical "texts."⁵⁹ Japanese teaching, in contrast, has no explicit theories; no exercises, just "texts"; no distinction between text and interpretation; and little verbal explanation. The absence of verbal explanation flows from Confucian and perhaps Zen Buddhist views of learning:

It is, of course, much easier for the teacher to interrupt the student and to explain verbally . . . but in doing so he transgresses his role as a teacher. . . . Any explanation from the side of the teacher in a medium other than music imposes a progress on the student from without. And only the progress the student has made at his own pace, without being urged to do so, is the progress that counts.⁶⁰

Similarities in method include (1) going to the teacher's house once a week for lessons; (2) individual instruction; (3) the use of notation for learning; and (4) the expectation that the piece should be memorized eventually as a sign of the internalization of the music. Halliwell continues with a detailed account of teaching and learning, including exposure to speech about music outside of lessons, how learning by memory develops "aural, mental, and physical skills," how the teacher regularly plays together with the student to show the way, how the teacher varies the length of the musical segment taught depending on the student's ability, and how students use oral mnemonics to practice while driving a car or sewing.

 

Informal learning

Many musical traditions are "learned but not taught" in a process that might be called "aural-visual-tactile."⁶¹ Studies of informal learning focus on the cognitive and behavioral aspects of observation and imitation; the use of recordings; the acquisition of abstract concepts about music; and the advantages of informal learning over formal training for many kinds of music in oral tradition.

A Balinese musician, Ketut Gede Asnawa, recalled that "impromptu music lessons" consisted of an uncle sitting and playing while he listened. He then worked out how to play the melodies on his own and also "listen[ed] to the old men play." Eventually he auditioned for the village group at the age of seven or eight and was admitted, the youngest ever.⁶² As a young child, the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthm accompanied her father to weddings where he sang religious songs. She learned them "by rote" from his singing ("I sang like a parrot") and soon joined his group, which included his son and nephew.⁶³

For music in oral tradition, the advent of recorded sound, especially inexpensive cassette recorders around 1970, has provided a source more important even than musical notation for learning not only repertoire but the details of performance style. Jazz musicians often transcribe entire solos from recordings, but also use them to learn shorter one-to-four-measure phrases to acquire "vocabulary, ideas, licks, tricks . . . things you can do."⁶⁴ One jazz musician recalled that he and his high-school friends got together after school at someone's home. "One guy would try to play a tune from a new Bird [Charlie Parker] record, and someone would say, 'No, that's not right,' and we'd hash it out together. Then we'd all go home and work on it and come back and see who had advanced the most."⁶⁵

Many ethnomusicologists and those they work with believe that, for music transmitted in oral tradition, traditional informal methods are superior to formalized training. In the Shetland Islands of Scotland, when informal learning held sway, "approximately one-third of the men and youths of the village could 'take a tune out of the fiddle.'"⁶⁶ When a teacher introduced fiddling lessons in a primary school in 1978, he started with 20 students. Four years later only one student continued to play. Peter Cooke blames this lack of success on the pressure associated with classical-music approaches to music education, compared with the more relaxed, encouraging, accepting approach toward learning in traditional settings.

 

The age at which learning begins

A number of researchers have reported on a culture's notions of the ideal age to begin music learning as well as differences in the facility with which music is learned. The idea that childhood is the ideal time to begin learning music is quite widespread. According to adult Suya Indians of the Amazon, "youth was the time when the ear was 'unclogged' and learning was easy."⁶⁷ In Nepal, Gurung children begin playing drums and singing songs at a very young age, "as soon as their arms are long enough to reach both ends of the drum."⁶⁸ Learning later in life is also reported. The Temiars of Malaysia receive songs in their dreams from "spiritguides" from their late teens onward, an age that suggests that it may take them this long to learn the formal conventions of Temiar song in the absence of instruction.⁶⁹ The hugely long trumpets of Tibetan Buddhist ritual require so much physical effort that youngsters do not begin to play them until the age of thirteen or so.⁷⁰

 

The order of acquisition of skills

The order in which musical skills are acquired has been of interest to a number of researchers. Teachers often introduce skills in an order they believe moves from relatively simple concepts and motor behaviors to more complex ones. In the absence of teaching, learners often seem to acquire rather complicated skills before or at the same time as they acquire seemingly simpler ones. John Blacking pointed out that "[Venda] children's songs are not always easier than adult songs, and children do not necessarily learn the simple songs first"; he believed that the first songs learned are the most-often-heard songs, not the structurally simpler ones.⁷¹ Todora Varimezova, a Bulgarian singer, reported that the first song she learned was a rather elaborate, highly ornamented nonmetrical song she heard her mother sing while doing housework, not one of the ostensibly simpler game-songs sung by children in school and during the Lenten season.⁷² More specific studies have discussed acquisition of "stock phrases" and other partial bits of pieces and performances, especially in improvised traditions, and the use of vocalization as a means for acquiring musical competence on an instrument.⁷³

 

The attainment and assessment of different skill levels

Many studies report on differences in the ability of learners, the speed with which they learn, and the means used to overcome these limitations. The Venda, for example, "have no formal musical training. They learn by imitating the performances of adults and other children; and if they do not realize when they are making a mistake, they are soon corrected by more experienced musicians."⁷⁴ Occasionally more drastic methods are used, especially when songs or dances possess ritual power. In such cases, errors can be dangerous. In the Reef Islands of the Pacific, for example, if boys make repeated mistakes while learning a sacred dance, men sitting and watching shoot "blunted arrows" at them!⁷⁵

 

Learning the content and skills specific to a tradition

Many studies focus on the acquisition of the actual content and skills necessary to perform in a particular tradition, for example, learning to improvise;⁷⁶ the learning of repertoire and the size of repertoire;⁷⁷ instrumental technique;⁷⁸ and differences between adult and children's repertoire.⁷⁹ Paul Berliner has created perhaps the most detailed study in the literature on the acquisition of musical skills.⁸⁰ He identifies six "levels of intensity" as jazz musicians progress towards improvisation. They learn to (1) play tunes in all 12 keys; (2) vary the melody "as if performing it for the first time"; (3) bend tones and change tone color; (4) embellish the melody with grace notes; (5) vary the tune; and (6) improvise new phrases and melodies. Along the way they (1) learn the harmonic basis for tunes; (2) generalize a number of different harmonic prototypes; (3) come to understand the malleability of form; and (4) deepen their knowledge of repertoire and original compositions.

 

Forgetting

Forgetting, the flip side of learning, is rarely mentioned, with one notable exception: a study of the music of Syrian Jews living in New York.⁸¹ A repertoire of 560 religious songs is "preserved" in written books containing musical notation, but only 178 were in "active transmission," defined as known and sung by two or more individuals. An additional 75 were known by a single individual and after his death the transmission of those songs will probably cease and they will be forgotten.

 

Ethnomusicologists' own learning

Ethnomusicologists' own learning of musical traditions is a frequently reported and time-honored practice that dates at least from A.M. Jones's 1934 study based on learning to play African drums.⁸² It was given a name as an important aspect of ethnomusicological method by Mantle Hood in his 1960 article on "bi-musicality,"⁸³ and it has been an important ethnomusicological research tool ever since, both "good fun and good method".⁸⁴ John Baily has pointed out the numerous advantages of this method.⁸⁵ First, it enables the researcher to learn about music "from the inside," including both its ergonomic and epistemological dimensions. Second, it facilitates a more detailed understanding of musicality, learning, and cognition. Third, it provides "social advantages," since the student has "an understandable role and status in the community." Fourth, such participation "leads to improved opportunities for observation" and direct entry to performance events.

Some of the accounts of this practice have been especially rich, in terms of (1) comparisons between the ethnomusicologist's acquisition of tradition and how people, especially children, learn the music; (2) what such learning reveals about musical knowledge, cognition, motor behavior, and the most subtle aspects of a particular musical art; and (3) what general cultural lessons ethnomusicologists have learned by taking seriously the task of learning music in another culture.⁸⁶

For example, I learned to play the Bulgarian bagpipe by easily absorbing the melodies and asymmetric rhythms played on it, but it took me years to learn the ornamentation that defines the style, a problem I have characterized as le mystère des doigts bulgares. I observed the opposite in young boys, however. Most were able to learn the ornamentation through direct observation but varied considerably in their ability to conceptualize the melodic and formal structure of the music and thus to acquire the large repertoire required of a successful musician.⁸⁷

Michael Bakan learned to play Balinese drums and was thus able to observe in detail how Balinese students move from "mimetic imitation to conceptual learning."⁸⁸ The student begins by mimicking "the motion of the teacher's mallet," that is, the learning is visual and kinesthetic as much as or more than aural. After describing how a few correct patterns begin to emerge as the learner tries to imitate the motions, he writes about one student named Wayan:

At precisely the point in the learning process where correct patches begin to emerge from rambling, Wayan begins listening to Sukarata's [the teacher's] demonstrations of the pukulan without trying to play along. This change in learning strategy clearly indicates a shift of attention from general musical shape and style to specific details of structure and form. It is here that Wayan's learning becomes more conceptual than imitative, more mental than physical.⁸⁹

A number of ethnomusicologists have learned important cultural lessons from their music lessons. Bakan's teacher, Sukarata, showed him through performance that, at least among Balinese drummers, "the true musical experience is the experience of trust, that only when we learn to trust one another, to dissolve in the realization of our shared humanity, will the music finally play."⁹⁰ John Miller Chernoff describes a particular, revelatory performance of his in which he comes to realize that what was at issue in a performance of Dagomba music was not "technical proficiency or emotional expressiveness," but certain fundamental ethical principles. Among these were patience and balance through dialogue as ways to overcome "overstatement and isolation."⁹¹

 

Conclusion

The ethnomusicological study of the learning and teaching of music is treated in four narrative contexts: (1) when it is the central theoretical point of the work; (2) when it is one of many topics in a survey of a music culture; (3) when authors report reflexively and at length on their own attempts to learn to sing, play, or dance; and (4) when biographies of individuals figure prominently in the narrative. Whatever the motivation, the study of music learning and teaching, as Merriam claimed and as this review of a portion of the literature demonstrates, has provided an important lens through which ethnomusicologists have come to understand human cognition, cultural expression, and socially structured behavior.

 

Bibliography

Baily, John. Music of Afghanistan: Professional Musicians in the City of Herat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Baily, John. "Learning to Perform as a Research Technique in Ethnomusicology." In Lux Oriente: Begegnungen der Kulturen in der Musikforschung. Edited by Klaus Wolfgang Neimöller et al., 331-347. Kassel: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1995.

Bakan, Michael B. Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Bennett, Stith. On Becoming a Rock Musician. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980.

Berliner, Paul F. The Soul of Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona People of Zimbabwe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Reprinted Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Berliner, Paul F. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Besmer, Fremont. Horses, Musicians, and Gods: The Hausa Cult of Possession-Trance. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1983.

Blacking, John. Venda Children's Songs: A Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1965.

Blacking, John. How Musical Is Man? Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973.

Booth, Gregory D. "The Teaching of North Indian Music: Three Case Studies." Contributions to Music Education 10 (1983), 1-8.

Brinner, Benjamin. Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Campbell, Patricia Shehan. Lessons from the World: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Music Teaching and Learning. New York: Schirmer Books, 1991.

Campbell, Patricia Shehan. Songs in their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Chernoff, John Miller. African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Cooke, Peter. The Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Czekanowska, Anna. Polish Folk Music: Slavonic Heritage, Polish Tradition, Contemporary Trends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Danielson, Virginia. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthm, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Elliott, David. Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Friedson, Steven M. Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Gutzwiller, Andreas. "Shakuhachi: Aspects of History, Practice, and Teaching." Ph.D. dissertation, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1974.

Halliwell, Patrick. "Learning the Koto." Revue de musique des universités canadiennes 14 (1994): 18-48.

Hood, Mantle. "The Challenge of Bi-Musicality." Ethnomusicology 4 (issue 2 1960), 55-59.

Hood, Mantle. The Ethnomusicologist. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.

Hughes, David W. "No Nonsense: The Logic and Power of Acoustic-Iconic Mnemonic Systems." British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9 (issue 2 2000), 93-120.

Jones, A. M. "African Drumming." Bantu Studies 8 (1934), 1-16.

Kingsbury, Henry. Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.

Kippen, James. The Tabla of Lucknow: A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Koskoff, Ellen. Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Loza, Steven. Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

MacKinnon, Niall. The British Folk Scene: Musical Performance and Social Identity. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993.

McLean, Mervin. "Dance and Music Learning in Oceania." The World of Music 32 (issue 1 1990), 5-27.

Merriam, Alan P. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

Merriam, Alan P. The Ethnomusicology of the Flathead Indians. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1967.

Moisala, Pirrko. Cultural Cognition in Music: Continuity and Change in the Gurung Music of Nepal. Jyväskylä, Finland: Suomen ethnomusikologisen seuran julkaisuja 4, 1991.

Myers, Helen. "Fieldwork." In Ethnomusicology: An Introduction. Edited by Helen Myers, 21-49. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.

Myers, Helen. Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the India Diaspora. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Nettl, Bruno. The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-nine Issues and Concepts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983.

Nettl, Bruno. Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Neuman, Daniel M. The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980. Reprinted Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Pecore, Joanna T. "Bridging Contexts, Transforming Music: The Case of Elementary School Teacher Chihara Yoshio." Ethnomusicology 44 (issue 1 2000), 120-136.

Pertl, Brian. "Some Observations on the Dung Chen of the Nechung Monastery." Asian Music 23 (issue 2 1992), 89-96.

Reily, Suzel Ana. "The Ethnographic Enterprise: Venda Girls' Initiation Schools Revisited." British Journal of Ethnomusicology 7 (1999), 45-68.

Rice, Timothy. "Music Learned But Not Taught." In Becoming Human Through Music. [No editor listed], 115-122. Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, 1985.

Rice, Timothy. May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Rice, Timothy. "Understanding and Producing the Variability of Oral Tradition: Learning from a Bulgarian Bagpiper." Journal of American Folklore 108 (issue 429 1995), 266-276.

Rice, Timothy. "Toward a Mediation of Field Methods and Field Experience in Ethnomusicology." In Shadows in the Field: New Directions in Field Research for Ethnomusicology. Edited by Timothy Cooley and Gregory Barz, 101-120. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Rice, Timothy. "Traditional and Modern Methods of Learning and Teaching Music in Bulgaria." Research Studies in Music Education 7 (1996), 1-12.

Rice, Timothy. "Reflections on Music and Meaning: Metaphor, Signification, and Control in the Bulgarian Case." British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10 (issue 1 2001), 19-38.

Rice, Timothy. "Time, Place, and Metaphor in Musical Ethnography and Experience." Ethnomusicology 47 (issue 2 2003), 151-179.

Rice, Timothy and Patricia Shand, eds. Multicultural Music Education: The "Music Means Harmony" Workshop. Toronto: Institute for Canadian Music, 1989.

Roseman, Marina. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rain Forest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Schuyler, Philip D. "Education in Morocco: Three Models." The World of Music 21 (issue 3 1979), 19-31.

Seeger, Anthony. Why Suya Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Sugarman, Jane C. Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Turino, Thomas. Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Vander, Judith. Songprints: The Musical Experience of Five Shoshone Women. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Weisgarber, Elliot. "The Honkyoku of the Kinko-ryû: Some Principles of Organization." Ethnomusicology 12 (issue 3 1968), 313-344.

Williams, Sean. The Sound of the Ancestral Ship: Highland Music of West Java. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Wong, Deborah. Sounding the Center: History and Aesthetics in Thai Buddhist Performance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

---

¹See, for example, Timothy Rice, "Reflections on Music and Meaning: Metaphor, Signification, and Control in the Bulgarian Case," British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10 (issue 1 2001), 19-38; Timothy Rice, "Time, Place, and Metaphor in Musical Ethnography and Experience," Ethnomusicology 47 (issue 2 2003), 151-179.

²Alan P. Merriam, The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964).

³Timothy Rice, "Music Learned but Not Taught," in Becoming Human Through Music, [no ed listed] (Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, 1985), 115-122.

⁴Timothy Rice, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Timothy Rice, "Understanding and Producing the Variability of Oral Tradition: Learning from a Bulgarian Bagpiper," Journal of American Folklore 108 (issue 429 1995), 266-276; Timothy Rice, "Toward a Mediation of Field Methods and Field Experience in Ethnomusicology," in Shadows in the Field: New Directions in Field Research for Ethnomusicology, eds. Timothy Cooley and Gregory Barz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 101-120.

⁵David J. Elliott, Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Timothy Rice and Patricia Shand, eds., Multicultural Music Education: The "Music Means Harmony" Workshop (Toronto: Institute for Canadian Music, 1989); Timothy Rice, "Traditional and Modern Methods of Learning and Teaching Music in Bulgaria," Research Studies in Music Education 7 (1996), 1-12.

⁶Mantle Hood, The Ethnomusicologist (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971); Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-nine Issues and Concepts (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983); Mervyn McLean, "Dance and Music Learning in Oceania," The World of Music 32 (issue 1 1990), 5.

⁷Beyond the monographic and periodical literature cited here, other important types of sources have not been examined, including textbooks, theses and dissertations, conference papers, and informal reports of colleagues' experiences. As one measure of the interest in this topic, at the 2001 annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, an all-day preconference symposium was devoted to the practices and philosophies of performance ensembles in university music departments and schools; Theodore Solis, the organizer, is editing a volume based on presentations at this symposium. Sometimes these ensembles are coached by native performers and sometimes by ethnomusicologists.

⁸Michael B. Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Paul F. Berliner, The Soul of Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona People of Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978; reprinted Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Benjamin Brinner, Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); John Miller Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Anna Czekanowska, Polish Folk Music: Slavonic Heritage, Polish Tradition, Contemporary Trends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); James Kippen, The Tabla of Lucknow: A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Daniel M. Neuman, The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980; reprinted Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Timothy Rice, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Marina Roseman, Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rain Forest: Temiar Music and Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Sean Williams, The Sound of the Ancestral Ship: Highland Music of West Java (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

⁹Stith Bennett, On Becoming a Rock Musician (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980); Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Henry Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Bruno Nettl, Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995); Deborah Wong, Sounding the Center: History and Aesthetics in Thai Buddhist Performance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

¹⁰Patricia Shehan Campbell, Songs in their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

¹¹John Blacking, Venda Children's Songs: A Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1965).

¹²For similar efforts along this line, see Brinner, Knowing Music, Making Music; Patricia Shehan Campbell, Lessons from the World: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Music Teaching and Learning (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991); McLean, "Dance and Music Learning in Oceania."

¹³For egalitarian societies, see John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973); for children's musical activities, see Pirrko Moisala, Cultural Cognition in Music: Continuity and Change in the Gurung Music of Nepal (Jyväskylä: Suomen ethnomusikologisen seuran julkaisuja 4, 1991); for music in adult initiations, see Alan P. Merriam, The Ethnomusicology of the Flathead Indians (New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1967); for music in adult socializing, see Jane Sugarman, Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

¹⁴Merriam, The Ethnomusicology of the Flathead Indians, 7.

¹⁵Sugarman, Engendering Song, 59.

¹⁶Ibid., p. 75.

¹⁷Fremont Besmer, Horses, Musicians, and Gods: The Hausa Cult of Possession-Trance (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1983), 40-41.

¹⁸Neuman, The Life of Music in North India, 85-144.

¹⁹Ibid., pp. 119-120.

²⁰Ibid., p. 124.

²¹Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance, 59-83.

²²Ibid., p. 59.

²³See, for example, Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation; Berliner, Thinking in Jazz.

²⁴Rice, May It Fill Your Soul, 44.

²⁵Philip D. Schuyler, "Education in Morocco: Three Models," The World of Music 21 (issue 3 1979), 19-31.

²⁶Paul F. Berliner, The Soul of Mbira, 136-159.

²⁷Steven M. Friedson, Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 27.

²⁸Anthony Seeger, Why Suya Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 53-54.

²⁹Elliot Weisgarber, "The Honkyoku of the Kinko-ryû: Some Principles of Organization," Ethnomusicology 12 (issue 3 1968), 313-344.

³⁰The study of gender and music is a rapidly evolving area of research in ethnomusicology, and reference to a few sources here hardly does it justice, but see, for example, Ellen Koskoff, Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Rice, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music; Judith Vander, Songprints: The Musical Experience of Five Shoshone Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

³¹Rice, May It Fill Your Soul, 268-271.

³²Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 31-33.

³³John Baily, Music of Afghanistan: Professional Musicians in the City of Herat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

³⁴Besmer, Horses, Musicians, and Gods.

³⁵Neuman, The Life of Music in North India.

³⁶Schuyler, "Education in Morocco."

³⁷Weisgarber, "The Honkyoku of the Kinko-ryû"; Patrick Halliwell, "Learning the Koto," Revue de musique des universités canadiennes 14 (1994): 18-48.

³⁸Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance; Nettl, Heartland Excursions.

³⁹Berliner, Thinking in Jazz; Steven Loza, Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

⁴⁰For Bali, see Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation; for Japan, see Joanna T. Pecore, "Bridging Contexts, Transforming Music: The Case of Elementary School Teacher Chihara Yoshio," Ethnomusicology 44 (issue 1 2000), 120-136.

⁴¹Virginia Danielson, The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthm, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 22.

⁴²McLean, "Dance and Music Learning in Oceania"; Suzel Ana Reily, "The Ethnographic Enterprise: Venda Girls' Initiation Schools Revisited," British Journal of Ethnomusicology 7 (1999), 45-68.

⁴³Bennett, On Becoming a Rock Musician, 3.

⁴⁴Ibid., p. 5.

⁴⁵Niall MacKinnon, The British Folk Scene: Musical Performance and Social Identity (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993), 58.

⁴⁶Reily, "The Ethnographic Enterprise."

⁴⁷Thomas Turino, Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

⁴⁸Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance, 111-142.

⁴⁹Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance; Nettl, Heartland Excursions; Wong, Sounding the Center.

⁵⁰Gregory D. Booth, "The Teaching of North Indian Music: Three Case Studies," Contributions to Music Education 10 (1983), 1-8; David W. Hughes, "No Nonsense: The Logic and Power of Acoustic-Iconic Mnemonic Systems," British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9 (issue 2 2000), 93-120.

⁵¹Helen Myers, Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the India Diaspora (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

⁵²Baily, Music of Afghanistan; Chernoff, African Rhythm.

⁵³Bennett, On Becoming a Rock Musician; Neuman, The Life of Music in North India.

⁵⁴Chernoff, African Rhythm.

⁵⁵Pecore, "Bridging Contexts, Transforming Music."

⁵⁶Hughes, "No Nonsense," 95.

⁵⁷Neuman, The Life of Music in North India, 34.

⁵⁸Chernoff, African Rhythm, 104-105.

⁵⁹Halliwell, "Learning the Koto," 21.

⁶⁰Ibid., quoting Andreas Gutzwiller, "Shakuhachi: Aspects of History, Practice, and Teaching" (Ph.D. dissertation, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1974), p. 155.

⁶¹Rice, May It Fill Your Soul, 49.

⁶²Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation, 194.

⁶³Danielson, The Voice of Egypt, 23.

⁶⁴Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 95.

⁶⁵Ibid., 64.

⁶⁶Peter Cooke, The Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 129.

⁶⁷Seeger, Why Suya Sing, 35.

⁶⁸Moisala, Cultural Cognition in Music, 136.

⁶⁹Roseman, Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rain Forest, 72.

⁷⁰Brian Pertl, "Some Observations on the Dung Chen of the Nechung Monastery," Asian Music 23 (issue 2 1992), 90.

⁷¹Blacking, Venda Children's Songs, 29.

⁷²Rice, May It Fill Your Soul, 55-56.

⁷³Booth, "The Teaching of North Indian Music"; Hughes, "No Nonsense."

⁷⁴Blacking, Venda Children's Songs, 29.

⁷⁵McLean, "Dance and Music Learning in Oceania," 19.

⁷⁶Booth, "The Teaching of North Indian Music"; Berliner, Thinking in Jazz.

⁷⁷Vander, Songprints.

⁷⁸Berliner, Thinking in Jazz; Brinner, Knowing Music, Making Music.

⁷⁹Blacking, Venda Children's Songs.

⁸⁰Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 63-94.

⁸¹Shelemay, Let Jasmine Rain Down, 199-204.

⁸²A. M. Jones, "African Drumming," Bantu Studies 8 (1934), 1-16.

⁸³Mantle Hood, "The Challenge of Bi-Musicality," Ethnomusicology 4 (issue 2 1960), 55-59.

⁸⁴Helen Myers, "Fieldwork," in Ethnomusicology: An Introduction, ed. Helen Myers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 31.

⁸⁵John Baily, "Learning to Perform as a Research Technique in Ethnomusicology," in Lux Oriente: Begegnungen der Kulturen in der Musikforschung, ed. Klaus Wolfgang Neimöller et al. (Kassel: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1995), 331-347.

⁸⁶The most detailed studies along these lines in this sample of the literature are Baily, Music of Afghanistan; Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation; Brinner, Knowing Music, Making Music; Chernoff, African Rhythm; Rice, May It Fill Your Soul.

⁸⁷Rice, May It Fill Your Soul, 64-86.

⁸⁸Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation, 281-333.

⁸⁹Ibid., 286.

⁹⁰Ibid., 333.

⁹¹Chernoff, African Rhythm, 139-140.