Toward an ethnomusicology of sound experience.

Abstract

In this chapter, I argue that ethnomusicology could benefit from taking more account of the ways in which human beings experience and interpret sound. Ethnomusicologists have tended to work at a metadiscursive level (writing words about others’ words), leaving the gap between musical experience and paramusical discourse under-explored. This chapter asks whether that situation can be changed and what may be gained by doing so, and is illustrated with an example of north Indian raga performance.