The journal Ethnomusicology was essentially started to forge a more visible community amongst ethnomusicologists and to promote the field. Apparently, early 1950's music ethnographers lacked umbrella organizations as a means of support for researches. Even worse, ethnomusicology education was scarce at the university level, so students aspiring to enter the field were left without resources on how to engage in the field.
Particularly in Germany, many researcher/ professors left during the Nazi regime thus leaving the country nearly dry of ethnographers (vol. 1, no. 1). To somewhat combat the shortage of support for ethnomusicology at the university level, the journal started a list of available courses at various universities (Survey of Courses in Ethno-Musicology and Related Subjects). The journal was also sent to various institutions thus introducing it to students interested in entering the field. This survey as well as the Bibliography section of the journal provided reading references on various topics relating to current ethnographic research. Eventually, the Survey of Courses stopped being produced in the journal (fizzled out by the late 50's) and was replaced by an even better resource, articles and dissertations. Because the journal reached its intended goal of fostering a community amongst ethnomusicologists, it was able to replace rudimentary listings of “news and notes” with feasible research material. By the 1960's it was a full fledged journal serving as a viable resource for the ethnographic community.
One interesting aspect of the ethnomusicology journal was its avid inclusion of art forms other than music. Even the early-on “Survey of Courses” sited materials having to do with dance and the visual and literary arts. Subjects like Folklore, Folk-Literature, and Primitive Art were referenced as being important to ethnomusicology education. Dance in particular was seen as almost inseparable from the study of ethnomusicology (vol. 1, no. 7). The aspect of performance would be of more importance in fieldwork when including dance in the research. A number of articles relayed ethnomusicology reseach that included dance as a crucial subtopic. Some of those include Song and Dance in St. Lucia; Dance-Music Interdependence; Ponca Dances, Ceremonies and Music; Dance, Music and the Daily Bread; Teaching and Research in Ethnic Dance; Folk Dances of the USSR; and The Development of Taos Dance. The 1961 no.3 issue even lists an entire collection of Dance reviews.
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Great post. Interesting to think of the journal as a means of advertising the very young discipline to potential students. I wonder if that worked? As you point out, many musical intellectuals left Germany and relocated to America at the onset of WWII, including pioneers in both comparative musicology and historical musicology. As you might know, David Josephson here at Brown has researched this a great deal. Its a fascinating topic.
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I kept seeing all the articles on the courses on ethnomusicology and wondered what they were there for - your idea makes a lot of sense. After reading your post I’m also interested in looking back at all those articles on other art forms, which I guess I missed. I did some research last semester for an art history course on trying to study the musical cultures of the ancient Mediterranean through how music is portrayed in their art (because that’s all we’re left with), so I’d be interested to see if that was the sort of route they were taking, or whether the idea was that understanding other artistic media gives a holistic understanding of a culture’s artistic output.
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