Ethnomusicology deals with the study of the music of the world. The
field is interdisciplinary, and ethnomusicologists draw on theory and
method from folklore, cultural anthropology, historical musicology,
literature, cultural studies and media studies, among other disciplines.
So when ethnomusicologists met at Makerere University's symposium on
ethnomusicology in October 2011, the issues dealt with spanned a wide
spectrum of concerns which can be grouped under three major categories:
Institutions, culture and identity. African Musics in Context discusses
the place of performing arts in Ugandan society, archiving music and
music sources, performing archival music, performing health and
religious issues in music, music and identity in East Africa as well
music in motion, which tackles how identity shifts when people move from
one place to another. All these are key aspects of our day-to-day lives,
and they are the themes that colour the music we listen to. This book
follows up on and extends work in an earlier volume (Nannyonga- Tamusuza
and Solomon 2012) which included papers from the first symposium in the
series. While this book focuses primarily on music and music research in
Uganda, the chapters by the contributors from Tanzania, South Africa and
Norway demonstrate the importance of scholarly and professional networks
that connect the different countries of the African continent with each
other and with the larger international scholarly community. If the
published proceedings from the first symposium mentioned above
represented a first in the history of ethnomusicological publishing in
Uganda, this second book in the series shows that professionalised
ethnomusicology in Uganda continues to gain ground and make
contributions to music research in Uganda, Africa, and the global
ethnomusicological community. The chapters collected here show that
ethnomusicology in Uganda has a healthy institutional basis and promises
to continue to make contributions that are relevant locally, regionally,
and internationally.
