Ethnomusicology, World Music and Analysis in African Music

Abstract

The study of African music traditionally falls under the academic discipline of ethnomusicology, but with this categorisation comes a degree of colonial baggage. Under the purview of ethnomusicology, many have approached the topic from sociological and/or anthropological perspectives, rather than musicological per se. While not without value, these approaches have tended to imbue African music with mysticism rather than engage with the music analytically. In this context has arisen an anti-formalist position, which suggests that it is inappropriate to analyse African music, because to do so is to impose an external world view on the subject. As has been powerfully argued, however, those who take this position simultaneously practise and apply other disciplinary formalisms to the subject, which opens up a raft of further questions and issues regarding the study of the cultural 'other'. Recent developments in the musical academy have questioned the dichotomy of musicological and ethnomusicological practices. Further, a body of African scholars, led by Kofi Agawu, is recasting African music as a musicological rather than ethnomusicological topic. This approach calls for scholars to value, demand and practise greater structural analysis therein: to deny African music the right to analysis, some argue, is to deny it the right to legitimacy. This article discusses some of the key positions and practices in the historical study of African music, recent developments in detail, and projected futures for the discipline. The author draws upon his own first-hand experience of studying and analysing African music in Ghana and Zimbabwe, and of teaching African music in Australia, to offer perspectives on the challenges and inherent value in studying and analysing the music of Africa.