Applied Ethnomusicology:

This article provides a brief sketch of how scholars may be actively involved in conflict transformation efforts using music or the arts beyond their purely artistic connotations. Here I will explore the ways in which music has been employed in some ethnomusicological projects based on my personal experiences, which can hopefully stimulate debate and provide some ideas for other scholars in different branches of humanities and social sciences. I would argue that scholars should at least occasionally break away from a position of contemplative self-sufficiency, the so-called ivory tower of academia, and efficiently employ their knowledge and understanding of music in the broadest sense for the betterment of humanity. In ethnomusicology, such pragmatic involvements represent a growing field commonly known as “applied ethnomusicology”. The two projects presented here, the project Azra and the project Kosovo Roma, employ several concepts derived from applied scholarship. These ideas draw on a relevant theoretical precedent in the field of anthropology, where concepts such as adjustment, administration, action, and advocacy are particularly pertinent (see Spradley and McCurdy 2000). They are also informed by practices in applied ethnomusicology, such as developing new performance frames, feeding back musical models to the communities that created them, providing communities with access to strategic models and techniques, and developing structural solutions to broad problems (see Sheehy 1992). Both projects are related, although in different ways, to the succession of wars that erupted in the territories of what was Yugoslavia. One of the projects was conceptualized far from the war-torn territories, in Norway, while the other was meant to take place in the former Yugoslav province of Kosovo. In both cases, music was treated as a powerful tool, able to empower minority groups and at the same time to enlighten majority groups. 1 A longer version of this article is published in the forthcoming book Music and Conflict eds