Response to Rice

Abstract

In his essay developing a model for ethnomusicology, Rice critically examines an old model commonly associated with Alan Merriam and The Anthropology of Music, one that has guided our field for more than two decades. In doing so, Rice isolates what he sees as the central problems with Merriam's model. Throughout his essay, Rice uses these problems as starting points and, at times, justifications for his own arguments. In responding to Rice, I feel it necessary to examine his essay as a whole, not simply addressing the new model, for I believe that the arguments used to provide a context for must be examined as critically as the remodeling itself. At the risk of appearing to be a Merriam apologist, I would like to return to his model as outlined in Chapter 2 of the Anthropology of MusicToward a Theory for Ethnomusicology (1964). Over the years, as we have grappled with this model, a sort of folklore has grown up around its deceptive simplicity, which has perhaps concealed the more complex relationships between people, music and culture that Merriam may have intended. We have for the most part tended to see this model as a tripartite structure because that comes closest to the way Merriam first presents it to us, and, simply, because it is easier to see it this way than in its fuller, more problematic, complexity. Even Merriam, himself, as Rice has noted, initially described his model as a simple one with three analytical levels. But a closer examination of the unfolding of his model through pages 32-33 reveals a far more intricate structure, both product and process oriented. I am now simply referring to the so-called model as presented in its entirety in the Anthropology of Music, not of Merriam's own re-thinking of the model in his later works.