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ABSTRACT
This paper considers debates that have taken place in ethnomusicology as a result of engagement with the classification of data. Landmark projects over the past century introduced various classification systems and initiated important debates within the field. From the author’s perspective, classification of data is understood as a necessary precursor to computation in these projects. Classificatory thinking is used here as a theme to explore debates that have arisen when abstractions of musical practice have been suggested for use with ethnomusicology. The paper proposes that a recent approach to research practice for embedding computation adds to ongoing interdisciplinary work, demonstrating novel ways of contextualizing archival materials with ethnography alongside computation. The approach attempted to strike a balance for engaging large amounts of data in ethnomusicology. The paper argues that some resulting tensions arising from classification lead to insights, which cannot be drawn by ethnomusicological methods alone.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The term ‘computation’ refers to computationally engaged research and work in the field of Digital Humanities or The Digital Humanities. Much research on the Seán Ó Riada Project was conducted in the Department of Digital Arts and Humanities at University College Cork in Ireland. However, historical projects mentioned in this article existed before this area of research emerged. Since the meaning of digital humanities is also a contested issue within the academy and computing is more definitive, I will use the broader term ‘computation’ to broadly focus on digital humanities practice in this article.
2 The ISAD(G) standard is a consistent international framework for organizing archival data. It is employed by archivists to allow interoperability and logical description to be used when detailing the collections of corporations and individuals. It utilizes a classification scheme in arranging and describing documents from general to specific terms, in a thematic fashion.
3 This digital prototype was referred to as a ‘Digital Visualisation Framework’ within the PhD thesis. Framework was used as it referred to an interactive version of data visualization software.
4 This holds true for the historical examples mentioned. However, current computational activity such as machine learning approaches may not require classification for computation to occur.
5 The tracks system is based on Reinhart Engel’s ‘Timeline for d3 – proof-of-concept’ (http://bl.ocks.org/rengel-de/5603464). Engel’s version of this work was inspired by ‘Simile Timeline’ by David François Huynh (http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/). It shows events that have a defined start and/or end in the time continuum in the form of a timeline or time chart. On the horizontal plane, events can be instants (one date only) or intervals (start date and end date). On the vertical plane, these events are stacked, and their position is determined by the availability of space within the timeline.
6 In digital humanities, classificatory thinking with computation is described by Berry (Citation2015, 126). Quoting Adorno, Jarvis (Citation1998, 177) describes it thus: ‘Classificatory thinking … does not say what something is, but only what it comes under, of what it is an illustration or an example, and what therefore it is not itself’. In this article, I demonstrate what classificatory thinking has meant for the investigation of musical phenomena.
7 Developers at music streaming service – Pandora (powered by the Music Genome Project) decide what traits of songs are important. See, for example, Kennedy (Citation2015), ‘Pandora calculates this musical similarity through the Music Genome Project, a database created by musicians, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists who, after 5 to 15 minutes of analysis, tag each song with attributes from a pool of roughly 450 “genes”’.
8 For a more comprehensive account of the Hornbostel and Sachs scheme for the classification of musical instruments, see Kartomi (Citation2001). Kartomi focuses on the approaches of scholars throughout the 1900s. In this article, I will focus on the significance of these approaches for ethnomusicologists.
9 Musical scores can also be understood as abstractions of musical practice. Abstraction of musical sound from its cultural, social and historical context was coined as ‘Schizophonia’ by R. Murray Schafer (Citation1969). Whilst a few points could be made in this article in relation to the abstraction of musical practice, it is beyond the scope of this paper. However, it warrants further study, as it also links to core debates in musicology and ethnomusicology.
10 Etic may be described as an approach to a culture that is general, non-structural and objective in its perspective, where the researcher is not already familiar with the inner functioning of a culture. Emic may be described as an approach to a culture where the researcher has already gained insider perspectives.
11 O’Flynn (Citation2017) suggests that fieldwork is significant because it causes academic discussions to become ‘grounded in everyday musical practices and beliefs’ (19).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Patrick Egan (Pádraig Mac Aodhgáin)
Patrick Egan (Pádraig Mac Aodhgáin) is an early career researcher and assistant lecturer in digital humanities at University College Cork and works on the development of digital models that assist ethnographic research on archival collections. He studied for his PhD at University College Cork in digital humanities and ethnomusicology. Egan is also a musician and ethnomusicologist focused on Irish traditional music, and in 2019 was a Kluge Fellow in Digital Studies and Fulbright Tech Impact scholar at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.