Chapter 4: Music Technology in Ethnomusicology
Gabriel Solis, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Abstract:
Ethnomusicology has often had an ambivalent relationship with technology: we owe our discipline to mid-twentieth-century developments in recording technology, yet nevertheless there is a strong counter-modern streak that characterizes ethnomusicologists as a group. This essay investigates the reasons for ethnomusciologists’ mistrust of certain kinds of music technology and calls for a move from ambivalence to critical engagement.