Assessing Disciplinary Integration in New Anthropological Studies of Music

摘要

Four recent books offer an opportunity to review new and continuing approaches to the study of music, not as an artistic product, but as an essential practice in human society and as a capacity that defines humankind. Two books examine musical capacity and music making from the framework of biological anthropology, drawing on new research in neurophysiology to connect biological and archaeological anthropology. The other two locate the study largely within cultural anthropology, drawing on ethnomusicology. Taken as a set the volumes invite disciplinary integration in anthropological studies of music.