Traditional musics and ethnomusicology

摘要

I have the impression that Western ethnomusicologists are a little bored by the obstinacy of their Eastern colleagues' ceaseless licking of their wounds, examining from every angle the devastating distortions imposed on the traditional musical cultures of their countries by communist and totalitarian political regimes. I have no perspective on publications which have appeared in the West over these last seven years: like all Romanian musicologists, I only read two basic journals and what some friend or other is good enough to send me; so I cannot judge whether our perseverance has really gone too far. But I understand that ethnomusicology, like every scientific discipline, frequently changes key in its dominant concerns. Nothing could be more normal than that we, the people of the East, with our little problems - which we continue to raise because we live them, because they are serious and because we are more or less responsible for them - should risk going out of fashion.