Mission Statement
Approved by the AMS Board in 2019, the AMS Global Music History Study Group aims to explore new methodologies and approaches to studying musics and sounds beyond traditionally defined local, regional, and national geographical domains. We realize that the colonialist legacy of musicology tends to exclude, downplay, or marginalize types of music that many consider “non-Western,” including music in Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Global South, and Indigenous groups. This tendency restricts studies of the interconnectedness between “Western” and “non-Western” music, resulting in an incomplete understanding of the Western musical canon and ideas of Western music. We support theorizing various translocal interconnections and dynamic processes while cautioning against uncritical ethnocentric, universalist, or colonialist discourses. To this end, we share in general the postcolonial, decolonial, and anti-colonial missions across the humanities and social sciences.
Building on the foundation of the scholarly papers presented in conferences since 2016, the AMS Global Music Study enters a new phase that pursues four objectives: 1) publications, 2) pedagogy, 3) intra-disciplinary collaboration, and 4) public-facing activities. In addition to working with editors of scholarly journals and other professional venues, we ask members to develop and share pedagogical resources and experiences on course designs, curriculum revision, and program development related to global music history. These pedagogical reflections inevitably lead to a closer examination of institution-specific practices relevant to the ongoing development of global music history. We also foster dialogues with sister groups such as ethnotheory, global history of music theory, historical ethnomusicology, and global musicology with music theory and ethnomusicology. To optimize the impact of global music history, we strongly encourage members to promote aspects of global music history in various public-facing activities and outputs.
