Un-mind the gap: questioning the division between artistic instrumentalism and autonomy from an ethnomusicological perspective

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to on-going cultural policy debates on artistic instrumentalism vs. autonomy, striving to undermine this apparent dichotomy by drawing from ethnomusicology and related fields. Ethnomusicology, although frequently ignored by cultural policy studies, has an established tradition of exploring the functionality of music. As such, it not only provides profound insight into social effects of music, but also helps reveal that the division between instrumental art and “art for art’s sake” is largely a historical and culture-specific invention of the Western (musical) world. Moreover, the article will show that Western music has always been functional, paradoxically partly due to its ideational separation from instrumental (especially economic) pressures. Hence, this article argues both in favour of a recognition of music’s powerful functionality and the need to keep the musical sphere at least partially separate from too straight-forward monetary and quantitative impact concerns.