Why Sociomusicology?

Why name a blog "sociomusicology"? Well, I am a musician and music teacher, but am also active in the academic fields of music teacher education and ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicology is often defined as the anthropological study of music, but the term sociomusicology encompasses the broader field of social science research in music (including psychological, sociological, and anthropological studies), of which ethnomusicology is one component.
Within this broad field of sociomusicology, I am particularly interested in topics related to music teaching and learning, and the emergence and institutionalization of new music traditions.

Musicians are often asked to identify who have been the artistic "influences" on their music. The same question can be asked of music researchers regarding their scholarly influences, and sociomusicology seems the best term to sum up a lot of different interests and influences:


From the side of music education, I particularly appreciate the important contributions of:
-Liora Bresler
[http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/ci/fsd/liora]
-Gary McPherson
[http://www.music.uiuc.edu/facultyBio.php?id=178]
-Lucy Green
[http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=4591&4591_0=4974]
-Robert Duke
[http://www.music.utexas.edu/directory/details.aspx?id=36]
-Donald Hodges
[http://www.uncg.edu/mus/faculty/musEd.html]
-Marie McCarthy
[http://www.music.umich.edu/faculty_staff/mccarthy.marie.lasso]
-Pamela Burnard
[http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/burnard/]
-Anthony Palmer
[http://people.bu.edu/ajpalmer/]
-Kari Veblen
[http://www.music.uwo.ca/bios/veblen.html]
-Randall Allsup
[http://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/index.htm?facid=rea10]
-Heidi Westerlund
[http://dept.siba.fi/muka/fin/index.php?pid=983]
-Victor Fung
[http://musiceducation.arts.usf.edu/faculty.html]
-Peter Webster
[http://www.emtbook.net/]
-Carlos Xavier Rodriguez
[http://rodriguez.arts.usf.edu/]
-Stephen Zdzinski
[http://www.music.miami.edu/faculty/MED/zdzinski/]
-Jere Humphreys
[http://www.public.asu.edu/~aajth/]
-Terese Volk
[http://www.music.wayne.edu/profile.php?id=112]
-Wayne Bowman
[http://www.brandonu.ca/Music/People/FacultyPages/BowmanW/DEFAULT.htm]

. . . and especially, wonderful mentors from my years of PhD studies:
-Patricia Shehan Campbell [http://www.music.washington.edu/faculty/faculty_bio.php?ID=42]
-Steven Morrison
[http://www.music.washington.edu/faculty/faculty_bio.php?ID=45].

Also, I have recently been enjoying the work of Carlos Abril, who is a prolific and insightful music education scholar of the same generation as me:
[http://www.music.northwestern.edu/facultyprofiles/]

I also greatly appreciate the scholarship of ethnomusicologists, particularly:
-Bruno Nettl
[http://www.anthro.uiuc.edu/faculty/nettl/]
-Tom Turino
[http://www.music.uiuc.edu/facultyBio.php?id=90]
-Bonnie Wade
[http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/music/Wade.html]
-Paul Berliner
[http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/87/Ethnomusicologist%20Paul%20Berliner%20considers%20improvisers%20in%20jazz%20and%20Zimbabwean%20mbira%20music]
-Andrew Killick
[http://www.shef.ac.uk/music/staff/ak/akhomepage.html]
-Ingrid Monson
[http://aaas.fas.harvard.edu/faculty/ingrid_monson/index.html]
-Shannon Dudley
[http://www.music.washington.edu/faculty/faculty_bio.php?ID=15]
-Margaret Kartomi
[http://arts.monash.edu.au/music/staff/mkartomi.php]
-Krister Malm
[http://www.kaiso.se/km/]
-Ruth Stone
[http://www.indiana.edu/~alldrp/members/stone.html]
-Martin Stokes
[http://www.music.ox.ac.uk/newsletter/Oct_2006/news.htm], and
-Judith Becker
[http://www.music.umich.edu/faculty_staff/becker.judith.lasso].

I am also attracted to scholarship in popular music and related areas by scholars such as:
-Timothy Taylor
[http://www3.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/people/taylor.htm]
-Keith Negus
[http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/music/research/k-negus.php]
-Robert Walser
[http://www.musicology.ucla.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=52 ]
-Christopher Small
[http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/small-00.php]
-Joseph Schloss
[http://soulimperialist.blogspot.com/],

. . . as well as renowned local New England music scholars:
-Reebee Garofalo
[http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/faculty/garofalo.htm] and
-Charles Keil
[http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/archives/ead/1064/1064.frame.html].

From the fields of sociology and psychology of music, I have been especially enjoying the research of:
-David Hargreaves
[http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/staff/davidhargreaves/]
-Adrian North
[http://www.le.ac.uk/psychology/acn5/acn.html]
-Jane Davidson
[http://www.shef.ac.uk/janedavidson/]
-Steven Brown
[http://www.sfu.ca/psyc/brown/publications.html]
-Robert Faulkner
[http://www.umass.edu/sociol/faculty_staff/faulkner.html], and
-Tia DeNora
[http://www.huss.ex.ac.uk/sociology/staff/denora/publications.php]

I am also very interested in the innovative and insightful work of empirical music psychologists John Sloboda [http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ps/jasbiog.htm] and

Richard Parncutt [http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/],

as well as music philosopher Stephen Davies [http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/staff/index.cfm?P=3111].

Much of my recent research is in the field of wind music transculturation, so I am attracted to the writings of Trevor Herbert, who has forged a unique approach to the social history of brass brands in the UK and abroad [http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/music/therbert.htm].

So much can be learned from reading the work of each of these music scholars. I have had the pleasure of meeting and even getting to know some of them, and enjoy contributing in my own way to the kinds of scholarship described here.

All the above is why this blog is called SOCIOMUSICOLOGY.

……………………………………………

Here is a link to an announcement for what I consider to be one of the most interesting books to appear recently in the field of sociomusicology:

Music and Manipulation

http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=BrownMusic

Here is a link to an open-access online article in which Steven Brown discusses issues in the field of sociomusicology:
http://www.mca.org.au/index.php?id=153

Here is a link to an open-access online article in which Charlie Keil discusses the concept of sociomusicology:
http://borntogroove.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=183

Here is a link to an article by Jos Kunst that also discusses sociomusicology, “Music and Communication: On Musicology as a Behavioural Science”:
http://www.joskunst.net/music_and_communication.html

Others who have written about the field of sociomusicology include Christopher Small, Kurt Blaukopf, Steve Feld, John Kaemmer, Steven Brown and John Shepherd, as well as music education scholars such as Barbara Reeder Lundquist, Tom Regelski and J. Terry Gates, Max Kaplan, Hildegard Froehlich, and Patricia Shehan Campbell.