The creation of S.E.M: what changed and what remained

The Ethnomusicology newsletter for the Society of Ethnomusicology has changed greatly over a span of 50 years, but in many ways it has remained similar with its core ideas. In examining old 1950s newsletters, I found the 6th issue to be most interesting, for it was in this newsletter that the formation of S.E.M. was announced. The society came from the American Society for Comparative Musicology, which had stagnated several years after its creation in 1933. The ASCM itself built upon the ideas of the GVM, a German group to which ASCM subscribed their members. The depression wiped these groups away, basically, and not until 1953 did a group of ethnomusicologists meet in Boston at an anthropological conference. A small group of enthusiasts put together the first newsletter, because they thought that the newsletter needed to be well-established before a group could be imagined. After the mailing list grew from 75 to 600, S.E.M. was thought up and the primary concerns voiced furthering communication and promoting research. These objectives, though obvious goals for a newsletter, have remained at the core of the newsletter. In the 2001 winter newsletter of Ethnomusicology, the official object remains to provide “advancement of research and study in the field of ethnomusicology,” a vague goal, but one that is necessarily vague because the definition of ethnomusicology keeps changing. These changes are especially evident in the 1950s. In issue six, one agreement the founders of S.E.M. come upon is that ethnomusicology is not limited to primitive music. By denoting the music they primarily study as primitive, they are already limiting their views, and creating comparative musicology, a word that reinforces antiquated ideas of ethnomusicology. The change from comparative musicology to ethnomusicology came around this time period, and yet research was still decidedly comparison-based. Examples of these comparisons abound in the 1956 issue. One example addresses the universal laws that determine tonal construction in tribal music, another compares Navajo and Apache music and culture, and yet another provides an overview of African rhythm patterns and compares the parts to western concepts. These comparisons have mostly made their way out of ethnomusicological research, because of much more understanding and respect for the researched cultures. There is still the same type of focus on cultures, however. In the 1956 issue, the end of the newsletter asks for information on courses on ethnomusicology. The newsletter asks for information about courses dealing with folk and primitive music, primitive music alone, or Oriental music. This is hardly how one would refer to such music now; to indicate that a culture’s music is primitive or Oriental is close to forms of racism. Funnily enough, in the 2001 winter issue of Ethnomusicology, it is interesting to read the titles of three articles in a row: Powwows and Identity on the Piedmont and Coastal Plains of North Carolina, All That Is Not Give Is Lost: Irish Traditional Music, Copyright, and Common Property, and The Sonic Dimensions of Nationalism in Modern China Musical Representation and Transformation.