In many societies, musical roles are divided along gender lines: women sing and men play. Men also sing and women sometimes play; yet, unlike men, women who play often do so in contexts of sexual and social marginality. This essay surveys the literature on women's use of musical instruments in a variety of social and cultural contexts and presents some contemporary anthropological theories regarding the interrelationship between social structure and gender stratification. The author concludes that women's use of musical instruments is related to broader issues of social and gender structure, and that changes in the ideology of these structures often reflect changes that affect women as performers
Ethnomusicology is the study of music in human social and cultural life. Closely related today to the discipline of anthropology, its basic method is ethnographic fieldwork. This chapter begins by presenting a history of the field of ethnomusicology, from its earliest beginnings (as comparative musicology) in late nineteenth-century Europe to its present standing as a major music discipline worldwide. The chapter proceeds by providing a critical analysis of current debates, theoretical directions, new practices, and challenges, before concluding with an examination of some important issues affecting the future of ethnomusicology. These include the effects of postmodernism (such as the development of new paradigms foregrounding fragmentation and multiple subjectivities) on the study of music; the rise of various technologies as harbingers of a new formulation of music as simply one category of sound; the effects of globalism on diasporic studies, conceptions of “musical flow,” and the ethics of fieldwork; and, finally, the roles of sameness and difference as organizing principles of ethnomusicological analysis and practice
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