I was very intrigued to find the website for the music and sound interest group, which is an interest group within the American Anthropological Association. Music and the study of how it affects human beings has always been something that has interested me because of the deep ties that music has to mathematics. There are many aspects of research level mathematics that are related to musical phenomena and as both a musician and a mathematician, learning about the interplay between these two seemingly separate realms of thought is something that I find quite exciting. If you have ever played a stringed instrument you can observe a fundamental relationship between sound and mathematics. If you pluck an open string on the guitar and next put your finger on the first fret and pluck the string, you’ll notice that the sound changes. The relationship between the length of the string that you are plucking and the sound it makes is just one of the ways music and mathematics work together.
The website for the music and sound interest group expresses the need for bringing together members of the american anthropological association and the society for ethnomusicology in order to bridge the academic gap between the two fields. The website also has a section dedicated to publications relating to sound studies as well as a section for recent articles relevant to musical anthropology.
The music and sound interest group was formed in order to recognize and encourage anthropological research on music and sound. This is, in my opinion, an interesting subfield of biocultural anthropology because one of its major focuses is on the topic of aurality, which relates to the human ear and sense of hearing. Our sense of hearing directly affects what sounds pleasant to our ears and the wide array of music that exists in our world today could possibly attest to the variations we have in our different senses of hearing.
The music and sound interest group exists to represent the needed bridge between anthropology and ethnomusicology which some might refer to as musical anthropology. The comparative approach of anthropology can be seen in musical anthropology via the use of comparative musicology. Comparative musicology seeks to classify the music of global cultures and illustrate their geographic distribution. This contributes a wealth of knowledge to the field of field of anthropology as it is the goal of anthropologists to seek answers to questions regarding human variations. Much can be learned about a specific culture by studying the music they produce, and by studying the music of different ethnic groups, anthropologists are able to explain universal trends in music and understand the causation concerning the creation and evolution of music. Anthropologists studying ethnomusicology seeks to understand the cultural impact of music in order to further understand humanity. The knowledge gained from ethnomusicology teaches us how culture affects music and music is in turn affected by culture. As a musician, I believe that music is deeply linked to all those who participate in it and I see this as an extension of the biocultural interaction that is of paramount importance in the field of anthropology. Musical anthropology, therefore, aids in the anthropological mission that is painting a vivid picture of all humankind.
Wow, thank you for sharing this point of view. I have never thought of music and anthropology as a collaboration but it makes perfect sense. Through the lectures we were being taught about culture and how that can in fact change the ways of our bodies. Music is different in every culture so how people interpret or listen to that music is different. A group of individuals that constantly have headphones in their ears may have a diminished hearing compared to those who participate in the making of music. The way that music even leaves the instrument and into our ears is interesting in itself with different cords, different instruments, and different musical pieces. The first thing I thought of after reading your post is the way deaf people interpret music through the feeling of touch. If we were to investigate deaf people, they probably have higher touch senses than the regular human being since those senses have to be heightened for survival. This was very interesting to me so thanks again for sharing.