This volume collects the proceedings of the International Seminar of Ethnomusicology of the same name, edited by Francesco Giannattasio and organised by the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies in January 2005. Studies on popular music – an untranslatable English term that indicates those musics that are produced and spread through the mass media in contemporary societies – are consolidated at an international level and also in Italy where courses in ‘Contemporary Popular Music’ are now taught in various universities. The object of study of this discipline presents significant convergences and overlaps with that of ethnomusicology, given that so-called traditional musics increasingly intersect with the phenomena of the record market and with the processes of musical diffusion typical of complex societies.

The growing interest on the part of ethnomusicologists in the phenomenon of so-called ‘World Music’, the soundscapes of urban realities and musical diasporas, the increased diffusion of non-Western popular music, or even the now constant exposure of listeners linked to the pop-rock idiom to ‘other’ musics and traditions, are just some of the factors that often lead the two disciplines to share the same fields and objects of study. And yet, popular music studies and ethnomusicology, sometimes due to a question of training, sometimes due to different research and analysis methodologies, still seem to move on two parallel tracks, and so far only rarely do they share a common debate.

At this seminar, scholars from both fields and with different research experiences demonstrated that they shared problems, perspectives and approaches to the study of the repertoires analysed, agreeing that convergence between the disciplines is possible, desirable and very fruitful. The texts collected here were published on the old Cini Foundation website back in 2007 and have been widely circulated, also providing useful references for ethnomusicology courses in various Italian universities. They are republished here, substantially unchanged, in a new graphic version and retaining their multimedia form, so that they may continue to circulate, considering them still valid, despite the time that has elapsed.

Go to the Italian language publication