Ethnomusicology Scholarship and Teaching - Blurred Genres: Reflections on The Ethnomusicology of Jazz Today

The study of jazz has been part of ethnomusicology since the 1940s, contributing meaningfully to the discipline's core theories and methodologies. In turn, ethnomusicological studies have profoundly colored jazz scholarship at large. This article surveys the literature of jazz ethnomusicology and its place within the contemporary Western academy, arguing that jazz studies is increasingly interdisciplinary. I offer the sanguine conclusion that in fact this interdisciplinarity has been precisely the goal of ethnomusicologists since the 1960s, and that accomplishing it allows for a broader conversation to take place between jazz scholars of various sorts and between scholars and practitioners. This is particularly important because, as this article contends, jazz ethnomusicologists—more than most other specialists in the discipline--commonly work in settings in which jazz performance is accorded a place of high value.