ssume music to be a kind of trinity of musical sound, musical concepts and musical behaviour. From this point-of-view, 'the music itself' might be the musical action or processes (performances) just as much as the products (songs) that result from these processes. Also, we tend to feel that music is intimately connected to society, and so we can go to somewhat extreme lengths in our attempts to show how exactly society creates music and vice versa. I imagine the folk music experts are more confident that they know what music is, and, as a result, would tend to see some ethnomusicological enquiry into musical processes and concepts as peripheral. 4. Ethnomusicological research often (at least in theory - less often in practice) tends away from the explicitly evaluative. Insofar as songs or musicians are criticised, it is from the perspectives of those who perform and sustain this music. External critique was frowned on, as was the kind of 'from-on-high' handing down of expert insights characteristic of musicological research. We might be very interested in why a particular singer thinks one song is 'authentic' while another is not, but we would not ourselves (again in theory) start telling other people which songs are or are not 'authentic'. Again, as a cultural 'insider', the folk scholar presumably feels more comfortable in offering personal (and often informed) views in such instances. Ethnomusicological relativism may seem admirably even-handed but also somewhat distancing. Musical enthusiasm and communicative passion are hard to reconcile with a discipline that rather passes the interpretative buck. 5. Perhaps because ethnomusicologists spend long periods of time working with, and learning from, musicians, much of our study is concerned with people. Who are they, what are they doing, do they hold notions of talent, aesthetics, status and so forth? In writing about musicians, a cross-cultural perspective may be taken, to gain further...
