Modeling Ethnomusicology

by Timothy Rice

Ethnomusicology is an academic discipline with a very broad to understand why and how human beings are musical through the study of music in all its geographical and historical diversity. Ethnomusicological scholarship, however, has been remiss in articulating such goals, methods, and theories. A renowned figure in the field, Timothy Rice is one of the few scholars to regularly address this problem. In this volume, he offers a compilation of essays drawn from across his career that finds implicit and yet largely unrecognized patterns unifying ethnomusicology over its recent history.

Modeling Ethnomusicology summarizes thirty years of thinking about the field of ethnomusicology as Rice frames and reframes the content of eight of his most important essays from their original context in relation to the environment of today's ethnomusicology. Rice proposes a variety of models meant to guide students and researchers in their study of ethnomusicology. Some of these models pull together disparate strands of the field, while others propose heuristic models that generate questions for researchers as they plan and conduct their research. A new introduction to these essays reviews the history of his writing about ethnomusicology and proposes an innovative model for theorizing in ethnomusicology by ethnomusicologists. This book will be an enduring, essential text in undergraduate and graduate ethnomusicology classrooms, as well as a must-buy for established scholars in the field.

272 pages, Hardcover

Published April 3, 2017

About the author

Timothy Rice is a professor of ethnomusicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He specializes in the traditional music of the Balkans, especially from the Slavic-speaking nations of Bulgaria and Macedonia. He has served the field of ethnomusicology in a variety of ways, including editing the journal Ethnomusicology (1981-1984), acting as President of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2003-2005), and serving on the Executive Board of the International Council for Traditional Music (2007-20013). He served as Associate Dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture from 2005 to 2008. He served as director of The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music from 2007 to 2013.