Explorations in Urban Ethnomusicology: Hard Lessons from the Spectacularly Ordinary

Abstract

reformulated. This paper addresses two old questions viewed from a specifically urban perspective. The first concerns delineating the object of study in an urban milieu. The multiplicity of rules which govern a great diversity of musical behavior within a broad range of events involving actors from a multicultural population, makes boundaries highly fluid. Where boundaries that define musical repertories, geographic areas, ethnic identities, institutions and other such entities overlap or contradict each other, how and on what grounds does one carve out what is to be studied? The more complex the socio-musical domain, the more difficult and, at the same time, the more necessary it becomes to deal with this issue. For as the study object becomes more a construct than a given, the justification for its status and its choice, itself becomes an analytical enterprise upon which will depend, to a significant degree, the productivity of the study that is to ensue. The second question is related to the first and concerns socio-cultural context. What might its implications be for work in an urban area when