Musicologists study the history of music; music theorists analyze composition and musical systems; and ethnomusicologists study music as a part of people’s way of life.

world music is technically music from other countries/places MUSIC AND CULTURE“I hate world music,” wrote rock star David Byrne, a stunning statement from someone who is known as a pioneer in that very category. Byrne expanded on this statement:In my experience, the use of the term world music is a way of dismissing artists or their music as irrelevant to one’s own life. It’s a way of relegating this “thing” into the realm of something exotic and therefore cute, weird but safe, because exotica is beautiful but irrelevant; they are, by definition, not like us. . . . It’s a none too subtle way of reasserting the hegemony of Western pop culture. It ghettoizes most of the world’s music. A bold and audacious move, White Man!4From nineteenth-century operas to contemporary techno tracks, Euro- American music has a history of adopting the sounds of other cultures for the sake of simple novelty, or exoticism. Although everyone always has his or her own cultural perspective, reducing music to an exotic status can be ethnocentrism, that is, judging music by its relationship to our own cultural experience.In this text, we will endeavor to understand music cultures on their own terms, through a variety of perspectives. To achieve a deeper understanding of music, musicians use several different approaches. Musicologists study the history of music; music theorists analyze composition and musical systems; and ethnomusicologists study music as a part of people’s way of life. Understanding new listening experiences from these points of view can challenge and enrich the perspectives you’ve grown up with.