ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

scientific study of music in any world culture or subculture in terms of its actual sounds and performance practices, in its relation to the specific culture, and in comparison with other cultures. The field was originally called comparative musicology in the 1880s by scholars concerned with the measurement of pitches, anthropological data, museum archiving, or the study of exotic music. Jaap Kunst, a Dutch expert in Indonesian music, created the term ethnomusicology in the 1950s, and in 1956 an ethnomusicology society was founded, consisting of musicians and anthropologists interested in world music. In the spirit of the preceding definition, the field has continued to expand so that such topics as Japanese art music, New Guinean tribal music, African court music, English folk songs, jazz, and the social and financial structure of European-American popular music can be found in its studies.