Can American Music Studies Develop a Method?

By Dale Cockrell

A few years back, a British ethnomusicologist presented some of his research to colleagues and students at my university. During the question-and-answer session that followed, a student asked, digressively, about the music curriculum in British universities. The ethnomusicologist replied that, typically, there were music theory courses on the one hand and musicology and ethnomusicology on the other. Then he added that he "understood that things were different in the United Statesthat there were courses in theory, musicology, ethnomusicology, and, additionally, American Music!" I must admit to some mirthful surprise at his notion that the study of American music was somehow generically different from courses in musicology or ethnomusicology, for I had always considered courses in American music to be musicology courses devoted to American topics.... Or, on second thought, that they were ethnomusicology courses devoted to American topics.... Or, upon further reection... So I started to see the point. In fact, it seems to me now that American music as it is being studied and taught today is not really musicology, nor is it ethnomusicology. And as I have thought more on this issue and observed the developing state of research in American music, I have come to wonder if a new musical scholarship, with its own excitingly problematic method and many of the characteristics of an academic discipline, is not in the process of being born.