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Music in Qualitative Research

Music in qualitative research can refer to both qualitative studies focusing on musical contents and issues and to research shaped by musical concepts and approaches.

Research on Musical Contents and Issues

This section provides a brief overview of qualitative research in social sciences disciplines that focus on musical issues, specifically ethnomusicology, sociology of music, and music education.

Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology emerged in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Germany and central Europe, practiced by composers such as Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály and musicologists such as Curt Sachs, shortly after taking roots in the United States. The discipline of ethnomusicology draws its intellectual roots, theories, and methods primarily from musicology and cultural anthropology. Ethnomusicologists are typically concerned with broad questions on the use and function of music, the role and status of musicians, the concepts that lie behind music behavior, and other similar questions, aiming to understand music in the context of human behavior and meaning-making. As leading scholars Alan Merriam and Bruno Nettl have noted, the emphasis is upon music in its total context: the investigator aims to gain a broad knowledge of the way music fits into and is used within the wider culture. Given these goals and the early recognition (decades before other social sciences disciplines) of cultural context and situated meaning as shaping knowledge and understanding, ethnomusicology has drawn on qualitative methods from the beginning.

Initially ethnomusicology focused on non-European music of oral traditions, but in more recent years the field has expanded to embrace various musical styles from all parts of the world, including Western vernacular settings. In the postmodern turn of the past 30 years and the eroding distinctions between mainstream versus exotic cultures, as well as the juxtaposition of research genres and methods, ethno musicology has provided an important research model for other music disciplines, including the sociology of music and music education.

Sociology of Music

Sociology of music is commonly defined as the application and development of sociological theories and methodologies to examine the role of music in society and to study music behavior and attitudes as part of social action. Sociology of music originated in the early 20th century in Europe and the United States, mostly using philosophical and quantitative approaches. In the past 30 years, as a result of the postmodern turn that affected all the social sciences and the expansion of research issues and contents in sociology, its methodologies encompassed qualitative methods. The paradigm shift from an objective reality (as exemplified, for example, by Immanuel Kant's notion of universal taste) to multiple, constructed realities that are grounded in specific social contexts and are worthy of attention required exploratory research methods that examine what people do and the meanings they attributed to it. Sociology of music is closely related to the sociology of culture; in particular, the sociology of popular culture. The view of music as a sociological and cultural entity heightened attention to the issues of identity formation through music. Other important areas of research are the ongoing construction of musical fields including the systems and logics of production and consumption, meanings, and attitudes; patterns of evolving musical taste; and the role of music in everyday life.

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