| Society for Ethnomusicology | |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1955 |
| Headquarters | Bloomington, Indiana |
| Membership | 2,500[1] |
| Website | www.ethnomusicology.org |
The Society for Ethnomusicology is, with the International Council for Traditional Music and the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, one of three major international associations ethnomusicology. Officially founded in 1955, its origins extend back to November, 1953 at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia with an informal agreement between Willard Rhodes, David McAllester, and Alan P. Merriam.[2] These three traveled together to the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in New Haven to enlist the support of musicologist Charles Seeger in their endeavor to create a new academic society. This meeting resulted in the launch of the Ethno-musicology Newsletter, ethnomusicology's first dedicated serial publication, containing notes about current field research projects, a bibliography, and list of recordings of interest to the nascent discipline. The first annual meeting of the society was in Philadelphia, in September 1955.
The society currently publishes a quarterly newsletter, a quarterly journal entitled Ethnomusicology, and an extensive set of "ographies" (bibliography, discography, filmography, videography). It organizes an annual international conference and over a dozen regional conferences, maintains an active website, and presents more than a dozen awards for scholarship and service, such as the Jaap Kunst prize for best writing in the field.