Course Description

In the industrialized world, it is easy to take the concept of “music” for granted. The global music industry, predicated on a commonly accepted definition of music that crosses geographic, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, is worth billions. Digital platforms have created new generations of musical creators, many of whom exhibit similar understandings of the word “music.” And the cultural prominence of global stars like Taylor Swift, BTS, Lang Lang, Rhiannon Giddens, Idina Menzel, and Rihanna point to a phenomenon that is recognizable across generic, historic, geographic, and cultural boundaries.

The widely held assumptions on which the global music industry runs reflect a particularly Western view of the ontology of music. This can create the impression that “music” is an unproblematic and agreed-upon artform. Upon closer investigation, however, it becomes clear that it is almost impossible to formulate a practical definition of music that applies universally to all activities that might be considered “musical” across all cultures, historical epochs, and practices. If, however, we consider music as an activity rather than a product, it quickly becomes apparent that music is far more than the songs, scores, and stars that fuel the global music industry. Rather, musical activity is a generator of social meaning that works within a distinct social context.

In this course, we will investigate these social meanings by turning our attention to a variety of global musics. By studying global musics alongside one another, we will see how scholarship in fields like ethnomusicology—historically devoted to the study of non-Western musics—allows us to unsettle some of our assumptions about the role music plays in our daily lives in the era of Spotify. We will investigate not only some of the most common assumptions that have influenced global musical practice through processes of exchange, globalization, and colonialism, but also the ways in which regional and local actors have creatively adapted, innovated on, rejected, and reacted against Western musical concepts. In doing so, we will also explore how contextualizing Western music in its global context adds to our understanding of the ways that music enriches and organizes our lived experiences.

Student Work

By default, all students in this course will collaborate to produce a group-authored blog project on a topic, artist, or work of their choosing. For examples of previous projects, you can visit the Western Music and Its Discontents section of the Ethnomusicology @ HMC blog.

Groups may propose an alternate final project format that better suits their interests. This course does not fulfill the HMC Writing Requirement.