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 V oL. 54, no. 2 ethnomusicoLoGy  sprinG /summer 2010

© 2010 by the Society or Ethnomusicology 

Call and Response—Revisited 

t yLer BicKFord /  Columbia University 

Iread and enjoyed Judith Becker’s article, “Ethnomusicology and Empiricism

in the Twenty-First Century,” in the Fall issue o  Ethnomusicology (vol. 53,no. 3, pp. 478–501). While it makes an important contribution to all o our shared interest in placing ethnomusicological knowledge on a rigorous basis,I question the use o the term “empiricism” to stand only or experimental,systematic, or quantitative methods. This is a term that has much wider im-portance to ethnomusicology as a whole.

The historical investment o ethnomusicology in ethnographic eldwork is rightly termed “empirical,” and a central contribution o ethnographic dis-ciplines to the humanities is to demonstrate that knowledge can and should

be based on experience and observation.Becker’s comment that “empirical research ell out o avor in the disci-

pline” (478) does not refect how ethnomusicologists I know think about or present their own research. As someone who is explicitly committed to whatI think o as “empiricism” (but not to experimental methods), it is disheart-ening to see the term used prominently in our fagship journal as though itexcludes ethnographic and interpretive methods. O course, “experimental”is one commonly accepted, i narrow, sense o “empirical,” but I think wehave an interest in preserving the wider meaning o the term.

Becker’s argument that ethnomusicological and humanistic questions canand should be asked by cognitive scientists and psychologists is appealing,not least or its suggestion that a larger audience might nd ethnomusicol-ogy valuable. My concern is that by dening ethnomusicological empiricismthrough reerence to those disciplines—to suggest that the work many o us do is not empirical—neglects a dening element o ethnomusicology throughout its history, and risks pulling the rug out rom under our whole en-terprise. That said, the main thrust o Becker’s article involves “reductionism”and “experimentation.” Since she and Je Todd Titon both use those terms

throughout their Call and Response much more than they use “empiricism,”

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I think her argument would remain intact i we were to reclaim the broadsense o empiricism or ethnomusicology as a whole.

 Judith BecKer  /  University o Michigan

In his response to my article, “Ethnomusicology and Empiricism in theTwenty-First Century,” Tyler Bickord challenged my use o the term “em-

piricism,” by pointing out that much o the work that ethnomusicologists dois empirical in the sense that it is based upon direct observation. Historically,Bickord is correct. I should have made clear that I was using the term inthe more recent, narrower sense, to mean knowledge gained by scienticexperimental methods. The historical denition o empiricism arose in pro-test against those who believed in innate ideas or in the power o reason togain knowledge. David Hume (1711–1776) and John Locke (1632–1704) areamong those philosophers most closely associated with the broader usage o the term who insisted upon actual experience, not thought or introspection,as the means to knowing. As Bickord has pointed out, nearly all ethnomu-sicologists are empiricists in this sense.