Writing for the Aurally Engaged Reader: Focusing Words with Music in an Age of Digital Mediation

Abstract

This article reviews three books and uses these as motivation to consider the changing conditions for the discourse communities which define musicology and its companion disciplines. More specifically, the books inspire a re-evaluation of the contemporary conditions of musical experience, activity, and research in a digitally oriented sound–word publishing world. The article notes a growing body of disciplinary literature that interacts with, or presumes, the presence of a particular readership that not only reads, but actively listens, while reading. It encourages a more aurally directed way of writing and suggests that musicology and its companion disciplines should continue to explore more coherent ways to link words to music.

Keywords:

• Readers
• silence
• sound studies
• ethnomusicology
• Charles Seeger

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Here and elsewhere I use ‘we’ to refer to a broadly defined musicology discourse community incorporating authors and readers of publications in the disciplines of musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, and music practice.

2 For examples of recent references to the elephant in the room metaphor in ethnomusicology, see Al-Smadi et al. (2022), Nettl (2010), and Becker (2009, 494).

3 This story is frequently cited. At its core, the story is one in which a meeting of several key world music record company representatives took place at the Empress of Russia pub in Islington, North London in June and July 1987. At this meeting the representatives agreed on a strategy to use the term ‘world music’ to promote and catalogue music from outside the western mainstream.

4 Readers will be familiar with a range of documents and discussion papers that have influenced university research practice in this area (among others, see Doğantan-Dack 2015; Smith and Dean 2009).

5 I have limited the examples to those involving reading about music. Naturally, podcasts and other forms of mediated presentation are further ways in which we experience musical understanding. However, since this article is reviewing texted sources, and since I am exploring publications, words, and music, I have left podcasts and similar media products off my list.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Alter

Andrew Alter is Associate Professor in Music Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He teaches in a diverse range of sub-disciplines including popular music studies, ethnomusicology, composition, and music theory. His primary research is in the music of South Asia, with a focus on traditional music from the Himalaya. He has published two books: Dancing with Devtās: Drums, Power and Possession in the Music of Garhwal, North India (Ashgate 2008) and Mountainous Sound Spaces: Listening to History and Music in the Himalaya (CUP, India 2014). He directs the Macquarie University gamelan ensemble, working with students and colleagues on various contemporary fusion projects inspired by the music of India, Ireland, West Java, Bali, and Jazz.