Ethnomusicology or Cultural musicology

Cultural musicology courses build on the illustrious heritage of Jaap Kunst who established our department’s global reputation as a centre of ethnomusicological research and learning. Kunst was the first one to coin the term "ethnomusicology" here in Amsterdam. Currently, Kunst’s heritage – notably his pioneering research into the musics of the Indonesian archipelago – is cherished, through regular workshops on our seven-tone Balinese gamelan Semar Pagulingan, and in the form of the Jaap Kunst Collection, encompassing his research and teaching material as well as that of his students and successors. 

Joged Bumbung Dance in Bali in the 1940s.  

Photo material from the Jaap Kunst Collection at the University of Amsterdam.

Kunst’s heritage is complemented with our current expertise in musical traditions from the Middle East, neo-traditional musics from Southern Africa, popular musics from Russia, and jazz in the US and Europe. However, Kunst’s heritage is also transformed, through our continuous reconsideration of ethnomusicology’s (colonial) premises in a post-colonial era, moving away from ethnomusicology to the study of music as culture.


Core module: Cultural Theory in Music

Possible electives (to be confirmed): Theorizing Musical Culture; Topics in Popular Music Studies; Reading Black Music, Musicality, electives in History, Anthropology, Cultural Analysis, etc.

Lecturers and tutors: dr. Barbara Titus, dr. Anne van Oostrum, dr. Lila Ellen Gray.