Greatest Hits in Ethnomusicology: Canon-building or Tokenism?
132 Music Building, free
Reception to follow
Cosponsored by Asian Studies Center
Philip Yampolsky will discuss the considerations involved in designing a world music performance program. At first, he thought the issues were simply pedagogical, but he has found that they are philosophical and moral as well. Is it elitist to study music associated with courts? Is it colonialist to study the music of former colonies? Are some musics inferior to others? The debate is essentially between inclusive and exclusionary<relativist and moralist<approaches to ethnomusicology, and the speaker is firmly on the side of inclusion.
Philip Yampolsky is the founding director of the new Robert E. Brown Center for World Music at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Yampolsky was the Program Officer in Arts and Culture in the Indonesia office of the Ford Foundation for many years. With his Indonesian
colleagues, Yampolsky recorded, edited, and annotated a landmark 20-volume CD series entitled "Music of Indonesia" (Smithsonian Folkways Records). In collaboration with the Indonesian Media Law and Policy Centre, his current research addresses the impact of intellectual property laws on Indonesian traditional arts (sponsored by the Ford Foundation and SSRC).