Ethnomusicology - Traditional Music and Song traditions

This study aims to explore, document, and interpret current performance practice in Scottish, Scottish-derived, and hybrid musical traditions, drawing comparisons with education, practice and performance paradigms elsewhere. Since the mid-twentieth century, traditional music and song performance in Scotland has undergone radical changes in terms of transmission, performance practice, content, function and ideology. While traditional music performance in the past was largely non-professional and part of an oral tradition, it has become increasingly formalised and intellectualised, as well as hybridised through influences from other traditions. Traditional music learning in Scotland now largely takes place in schools, colleges, and universities. This study feeds into larger relevant research areas in ethnomusicology, such as the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the current University of Aberdeen ‘The North’ research theme.

Potential subject areas may include:
• Traditional music in formal education
• Northern song traditions
• Scottish-derived music and/or song traditions in arctic regions.
• Scottish influence on indigenous non-Scottish performance traditions
• Musical transformations around the North Atlantic rim
• Transatlantic musical flow
• Music and the sea.