Diverse Musicological Studies

Musicology has expanded well beyond the analysis of scores and composers to encompass how music shapes and is shaped by culture, environment, and political life — drawing on ethnomusicology's long tradition of studying music as social practice and ecomusicology's newer focus on the relationships between sound, ecology, and environmental sustainability. Researchers in this space examine how indigenous communities encode ecological knowledge through musical traditions, how archival and digital resources can preserve endangered cultural heritage without distorting it, and how music functions as a tool for peacebuilding and community empowerment in contexts of conflict or displacement. Open questions include how to handle the ethics of data citation and access when working with communities whose knowledge has historically been extracted without consent, and whether applied ethnomusicology can meaningfully influence policy on cultural conservation and environmental justice rather than simply documenting them.

Works

199,136

Total citations

217,030

Keywords

EcomusicologyEthnomusicologyEnvironmental SustainabilityCultural ConservationMusic and PeacebuildingIndigenous Knowledge