Story by Heather Ah San
Photos by Luke Harris
A distant but overwhelming wailing noise sounds over the city; to the Western world, it’s nothing more than alien sounds, meaningless, and foreign of what is deemed as music. What then, must the Eastern world think of our pyrotechnic, clashing noise, incoherent rap about demeaning women, or Britney Spears’ If U Seek Amy?
The misunderstandings and cultural barriers that divide Western and Eastern music seem like the iron curtain of cultural and social understanding. I can see the apocalypse now: religious singers of ganga facing a cold war with Britney Spears over whether music should become more sexual or sacred. However, there is a light at the end of this tunnel. What is its name? Ethnomusicology.

Ethnomusicology provides cultural understandings of Eastern and Western music.

A lot of what ethnomusicology entails is field work, going to other countries to study, and work with natives to find the correlation between culture and music. Ethnomusicology, unlike music history, is an interactive study; less about the facts and more speculative about the current effects and influences of music. As the demographic of American cultures diversifies with social change and the influx of immigrants, the need for understanding foreign cultures becomes imperative.
Ethnomusicology can easily be stereotyped as the study of world music. Comparatively, the study of world music can easily be attributed with racial stereotypes, colonialist influences, and minority groups struggling with the divide between their American and foreign identities. These stereotypes however, are what ethnomusicology aims to understand and break.
Music programs across the country have recognized this, and have made ethnomusicology an essential part of many curriculae, including that of the University of Oregon.
With classes like Music of India or Music and Gender, Oregon strives to provide students with as diverse a curriculae as possible. Though the program is still small in comparison to the classical and jazz music programs, it’s slowly evolving with the help of professors and students and the funding for its expansion and development.
Professor Mark Levy sits in his small office preparing for my interview. I see a mixture of slight confusion and apprehension as to why I have come to interview him. I, being nervous, immediately ask what classes he teaches. Then, as if a fire has ignited, his eyes sparkle and he immediately delves into his excitement for ethnomusicology.
Levy has been teaching at the University of Oregon since 1991. With a music degree from the University of Chicago and a specialization in ethnomusicology at the University of California Los Angeles, Levy is well aware of the challenges of exposing ethnomusicology to the western world—specifically, at the UO.
Currently, the university offers no degree for ethnomusicology. “There’s simply not enough funding to expand the program,” Levy says. “However, the UO has made Music in World Cultures a mandatory class for all music majors. This just shows us how ethnomusicology is becoming more important.”
Levy’s passion for ethnomusicology is infectious. Over the years the attendance for classes such as Music in World Cultures has increased by leaps and bounds. The classroom is filled with up to 150 students who, to my surprise, take a keen interest in learning about world music. The concepts initially seem abstract, even absurd, in our university community.
Levy plays a Muslim singing genre called ganga. Despite my trying to keep an open mind, it still sounds like intensely loud whining. But Levy explains it’s a part of a religious ceremony called the Mevlud Festival, celebrating the birth of the Muslim holy figure Muhammad. At the festival, single women participate in courtship by singing ganga.
The difference between male and female ganga is that the women are judged by their singing skills to a certain degree while males are allowed to sing as loudly and powerfully as they wish. This, Levy comments, is reflective of the social norm of the culture.
Levy says that he tends to highlight the differences between Western and Eastern cultures rather than the similarities. Yet rather than building upon the barriers between these two worlds, ethnomusicology aims to break these barriers through musical understanding. “It’s my mission to expand musical awareness,” Levy says.
In the course of the past 40 years, the University of Oregon has slowly been adjusting to the idea of ethnomusicology. In the 1950s, when major universities were fostering budding ethnomusicology programs, UCLA music professor Robert Trotter came to the UO and proposed “to give students experience with ‘underexposed’ music,” says Brad Foley, Dean of the School of Music and Dance at the University of Oregon.

During the years Trotter was dean of UO’s music school (1963-69, 70-75), he drastically reformed the traditionally classical music school. However, it wasn’t until recently that ethnomusicology classes were made mandatory for music majors.
Anne Dhu McLucas, a former dean of the music school and current professor in the Ethnomusicology department, believes that students take a lot out of the ethnomusicology classes offered. “For students who are purely classically trained, it significantly alters their mindset and how they view music,” McLucas says.
Tyler Kinnear, a student teaching assistant in Music in World Cultures, agrees with this statement. Kinnear, who is earning a degree in musicology, says that learning about world music is refreshing in contrast to his western music background. “It’s like eating a hamburger night after night, and then suddenly eating Indian food!”
So, what are the differences between the study of ethnomusicology and the study of classical music? Classical music, for the most part, can only be studied through history and speculation. For example, a musician can never ask Bach how he wished a piece to be performed; questions can only infer from historical evidence from studies. Ethnomusicology is concerned more with the present. Instead of using facts to reason, one asks artists still living today what their opinion would be.
To McLucas, ethnomusicology is all about field work and personal interaction. “Ethnomusicology used to be seen as colonization, now there is a lot more personal interaction; the field workers and those being studied work hand in hand,” McLucas says.
Although she describes ethnomusicology very differently from Levy, she shares Levy’s passion for understanding world cultures. “Ethnomusicology is music outside the Western culture, and how you look at it in its context and culture. It doesn’t aim to ‘bring the world together’ but rather to provide a cultural understanding of one another’s cultures, and break the barriers between western and eastern music,” she says.

“It significantly alters their mindset and how they view music.”

Music has a lot of influence on the cultural, social, and even political barriers that diminish our understanding of one another. Thus, prejudices and stereotypes slowly become erased, and a mutual understanding is gained through music. It sounds like a lofty goal, but McLucas sees promise as ethnomusicology’s influence evolves and spreads throughout the country.
That influence is starting to catch on at the UO, and Levy would like to see more funding put into the ethnomusicology program.
“Typically, most funding is given to the western popular and classical music, and ethnomusicology is sort of a ‘frill.’ There is simply too much to teach in terms of ethnomusicology and not enough funds to support it,” he says.
Luckily, the ethnomusicology program will soon be growing with the arrival of a young and exciting new professor in fall 2009. Loren Kajikawa, currently a graduate student at UCLA, plans to bring new courses on African and Asian music, not currently offered at the UO. Kajikawa will eventually replace McLucas after she retires.
In addition, the program has received funding to provide a master’s program with a major in ethnomusicology within the next few years. When it’s complete, the UO will offer the only ethnomusicology program in the state of Oregon.
The completion of an ethnomusicology degree excites Dean Foley. Levy, who has been with the program the longest, is most excited of all.
“I enjoy those light bulb moments when a student finally gets something, when they discover the universes of music.”
“[Students] come in with an initial appreciation of world music, but leave with an even greater awareness, knowledge and respect of the world around them,” Kinnear says.