Marburg, Germany - Course Descriptions - Music and Anthropology: An Introduction to Ethnomusicology

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Aims and Content:

How to conciliate two different ideas on the music in a cultural and social approach: its permanent change through improvisations ("One of the most important characteristic of the popular music is its continuous variability" / Bela Bartok) and its role in the definition of a group identity? These two ideas are in the center of some modern considerations: ethnomusicology and world music market, improvisation and written communication, for example.

Our seminar is based on challenging a research and a reflexion on the music in anthropology, using three ethnomusicologists' works, Bernard Lortat-Jacob (CNRS-Paris), Alan Lomax (Association for Cultural Equity-New York) and Valdis Muktupavels (University of Riga).

Bibliography and links:

• Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Ed.) 1991. Populäre Musik in Afrika (N:F. 32 /Abt. Musikethnologie VIII). Berlin.
• Bernard Lortat-Jacob. 1994.  Musiques en Fête. Nanterre. Société française d'ethnomusicologie
• http://www.culturalequity.org/index.html
• Vikis-Freibergs (Ed.) 1989  Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs. Kingston and Montreal. McGill-Queen's University Press. 

Presentation:

Course in English language, French admitted. Presentations and written works can also be done in German.

Teaching method:

Teacher's lectures, research in workshops, group discussions, students' course essays.

Assessment method:

Evaluation of course essays and of the participation in and quality of discussions and researches.

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