African music research and the new empiricism

Abstract

The past thirty years have seen a resurgence in empirical, data-driven research focused on human musical behaviour. Some researchers have gone so far as to describe this as the ‘comeback’ of systematic musicology (e.g. Honing 2004), while others have noted the potential of empirical methodology in shaping other areas of music research (Parncutt 2007). The most visible example of this is the explosion of music-related research in the cognitive sciences. And, as if by some stroke of fortune, calls for the cross-cultural expansion of empirical data beyond Western materials and subjects have come along at just the same time that African musicology finds itself at a self-reflective crossroad. South Africa represents Africa’s largest musicological community, and to say that it is in crisis is an understatement. The causes of this crisis are many and varied: decreased funding in the tertiary sector in general, calls for decolonisation of curricula and research programmes in the wake of #FeesMustFall, persistent disputes over research ethics, clashes between academics and the university management, and rather unhealthy levels of intradisciplinary office politics. Indeed, the crisis itself has already generated so much literature that there are probably more self-reflective articles on the state of the discipline than published research on a major genre like motswako, or the Nigerian hip hop industry, or even on increasingly threatened traditional African musical cultures. That in itself goes to show that something is very seriously wrong with the way we go about the business of music research. Elsewhere (Ross 2018), I have commented that one overlooked aspect of this crisis has to do with standards of scholarship. In my view this is the greatest long-term threat facing not only musicology in Africa, but the position of musicology within the global academy. We have a discipline divided and under financial pressure, and proposed solutions seem constructive and destructive in equal measure. It is not all doom and gloom, however. African music researchers are in a prime position to take advantage of the rise of empirical methodologies in the study of music. Such methodology is present in an increasing number of fields, from music education and music technology, to market research and music information retrieval. I will here use as my primary example the field of music psychology, not only because it is my own area of specialisation, but also because it represents the largest and most influential empiricallyminded field in current music studies. Music psychology in particular points toward a return to strong, evidence-based argumentation when dealing with music research. Its nature is broadly positivist – that is, it relies on the generation of observable data as a premise for further modification of hypotheses. But at the same time, this positive data is interpreted against the backdrop of theory and carefully articulated philosophical positions about the biological nature of the mind, as well as increasingly nuanced models of human music and musicality. The data-orientated nature of music psychology is such that it produces research