Applied Ethnomusicology and Empowerment Strategies : Views from across the Atlantic * Aplikativna etnomuzikologija in strategije podajanja moči : pogledi z obeh strani Atlantika

The article consists of three parts. The first part presents an outline of the historical developments of applied ethnomusicology in Europe and USA, from the public sector activities of comparative musicologists in the early 20th c. all the way to the announcement of the first conference of newly-established ICTM’s study group in Ljubljana in 2008. The second part is dedicated to the issues of definition and classification of approaches. The third part features five categories of subjects (minorities, diasporas, ethnic groups, immigrants, refugees) and based on selected examples from the territories of what was Yugoslavia presents ethnomusicological interventions that exceed the obvious academic goals of broadening and deepening of scholarly knowledge.

Applied ethnomusicology is not a new term within the scope of ethnomusicology, but its essence, connotations and boundaries are still not clearly defined and this article's intention is to encourage thinking and discussion about it.So far, there is no book to provide a synthesis of the ongoing debates and to present a selection of -both successful and failed -case studies.My basic argument in this article is that the notion of applied ethnomusicology is felt as increasingly relevant to ethnomusicologists on both sides of the Atlantic and that their growing interest in it is often related to the groups of people in focus of the International Council for Traditional Music's (later in the text shortened to ICTM) colloquium at the Wesleyan University: minorities, diasporas, ethnic groups, immigrants, and refugees.Due to the format of the colloquium, my attention is limited to the moves within the discipline in Europe and United States of America, while the articles in this volume of Musicological Annual testify that similar and mutually related moves take place elsewhere in the world, too.Later in the article, four debatable subcategories of applied ethnomusicology, proposed with the purpose to encourage discussion, are followed by short presentations of the five colloquium's categories as seen in the territories of former Yugoslavia.

A Historical Overview
One could argue whether various colonial expositions and other showcases involving comparative musicologists should be identified as a part of the early history of applied ethnomusicology and to what extent comparative musicology in general contributed to the "public sector" of the discipline.At the same time, it is clear that the other branch of European ethnomusicology -folk music research -was throughout the previous century linked to the applied domain.The principal goal of many folk music researchers, that of protection of their national heritage, implied practical application of their findings. 1Besides scholarly procedures that usually included field research, transcription, analysis, archiving and publication, they often actively engaged in popularization of folk music and dance.Important channels for this were state-sponsored folklore ensembles in eastern parts of Europe and less formalized revival ensembles in its western parts.Ethnomusicologists assumed various roles in these processes: providing the ensembles with musics and dances collected in the field, writing musical arrangements and/or choreographies, singing, playing instruments and/or dancing, leading the ensembles and touring with them.
It is appropriate to start the discussion about the developments on the American side with the most often quoted book in ethnomusicology, Alan Merriam's The Anthropology of Music.While thinking about the ultimate aim -searching out knowledge for its own sake or attempting to provide solutions to practical problems -Merriam noted that "ethnomusicologists have only rarely felt called upon to help solve problems in manipulating the destinies of people" and that "it is quite conceivable that this may in 1 Folk music and national aspects of its research in Europe are examined in several writings including Bohlman (2004), Hemetek  (2006) and Pettan (2001).A recent ethnomusicological gathering at the University of Cardiff and a plenary session at the 39 ICTM world conference were dedicated to the same issue (both organized by John Morgan O'Connell in 2007).
the future be of increased concern " (1964:43).This statement was obviously in a sharp contrast to anthropology and its applied domain that grew up steadily from the 1950s on.On the other hand, it seems likely that criticism directed at applied anthropologists in late 1960s and early 1970s for "doing work of no relevance to social problems, of mixing in local politics, of spying" (Nettl 1983:297) hindered attempts that would eventually lead towards an applied ethnomusicology.
Increasing influx of immigrants in western Europe in the second half of the 20th century gradually raised interest in their musical cultures among ethnomusicologists.Besides important studies on immigrant musics (e.g.Ronström 1991) and cultural policies (Baumann 1991) several ethnomusicologists, particularly in Sweden, became involved in applied projects such as the Ethno camp for young musicians in Falun and music making within the ensembles such as the Orientexpressen. 2 A creative three-year project named The Resonant Community was set in several elementary schools in the Oslo area in 1989, bringing together ethnomusicology and music education in paving the way to better appreciation between Norwegians and the immigrants from Africa, Asia and Latin America through their respective musics.Multicultural education, which in America "grew out of the ferment of the civil rights movement of the 1960s" (Banks and McGee Banks 2001:5) gradually became recognized and also debated in Europe.The European Music Council's conference Aspects on Music and Multiculturalism, thanks to Krister Malm, brought to Falun in 1995 several participants of the 2006 ICTM's colloquium at the Wesleyan University that directly inspired this article. 3fter indicative absence of applied ethnomusicology in various summaries of the discipline in the following decades (e.g.Myers 1992, Schuursma 1992), 4 it seems that the thematic volume 36/3 (1992) of the journal Ethnomusicology announced important changes.However, according to the journal's editor at that time and the author of the introductory article Jeff Todd Titon, his idea to dedicate the whole volume of the leading American ethnomusicological periodical to applied ethnomusicology received very mixed reactions (personal communication).Titon, together with the other authors in the mentioned volume (Daniel Sheehy, Bess Lomax Hawes, Anthony Seeger, Martha Ellen Davis) succeeded in bringing forth "what ethnomusicologists do in public interest" to the attention of ethnomusicological academia and in creating a space for possible re-evaluation and re-positioning of the applied work within ethnomusicology as a whole.
It took six more years, until 1998, for the Applied Ethnomusicology Section to be established within the Society for Ethnomusicology (later in the text shortened to SEM).5 Its web page suggests that "the applied ethnomusicology section is devoted to work in ethnomusicology that falls outside of typical academic contexts and purposes" and points to the activities such as "festival and concert organization, museum exhibitions, apprenticeship programs, etc." while its members "work to organize panel sessions and displays at SEM conferences that showcase this kind of work and discuss the issues that surround it, as well as foster connections between individuals and institutions".There 2 For instance, Dan Lundberg, Owe Ronström.

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The proceedings contain articles by Kristof Tamas, Max Peter Baumann, Mark Slobin and Krister Malm.The same counts for major encyclopedic resources.
is no definition of applied ethnomusicology per se, but the mission statement makes clear that "The Applied Ethnomusicology Section joins scholarship with practical pursuits by providing a forum for discussion and exchange of theory, issues, methods and projects among practitioners and serving as the 'public face' of ethnomusicology in the larger community".
The firs conference on applied ethnomusicology, Invested in Community: Ethnomusicology and Musical Advocacy, took place at the Brown University in Providence USA in 2003.(http://dl.lib.brown.edu/invested_in_community)According to the sponsor, the Graduate Program in Ethnomusicology at Brown University, this was "the first conference in the United States to focus on the vital role of the academic in advocating community music", featuring "applied ethnomusicologists (who) work as musical and cultural advocates, using skills and knowledge gained within academia to serve the public at large.They help communities identify, document, preserve, develop, present and celebrate the musical traditions they hold dear".Important to note, Jeff Todd Titon teaches ethnomusicology at Brown and his doctoral student there at that time Maureen Loughran, who also served as one of the principal organizers of the conference (the other being Erica Haskell), is the author of one of the articles in this volume of Musicological Annual.
In 2003 Italian ethnomusicologists organized the 9th International seminar in Ethnomusicology in Venice titled Applied Ethnomusicology: Perspectives and Problems.While recognizing that "setting up museums, service within administration of colonial empires, organization of concerts, divulgence by means of publication of writings and recordings" (…) were part of the professional profile of comparative musicologists at the beginnings of the 20 th century" they also noticed recent "significant developments" and pointed to the issues such as: intercultural education, music in relation to diaspora, immigration and refugees, "spectacularization" of traditional music and cultural cooperation projects.
The 15th colloquium of the ICTM, organized by John Morgan O'Connell in Limerick, Ireland, in 2004 was titled Discord: Identifying Conflict within Music, Resolving Conflict through Music.Although music and conflict by all means make a suitable ethnomusicological topic and applied ethnomusicology was not particularly emphasized in the colloquium documents, several presentations pointed to "ethnomusicology as an approach to conflict resolution". 6ne of the SEM's regional chapters followed up in 2004: "With the recognition of a growing interest among MACSEM members in applied ethnomusicology, public sector programming, and pedagogical music and dance (workshops, lecture/ demonstrations, etc.), we invite papers and proposals from members wishing to present recent research or works-in-progress; discuss current fieldwork and/or collection practices and methodologies; and share resources and aspects of the communities and musicians they work with".It also made an explicit step further by asking the participants to address "what, if any, political impact ethnomusicological activity may have upon local and regional communities and the artists involved, and/or on public, private, city, state and/or federal institutions".
The 38th world conference of the ICTM that took place in Sheffield, England, in 2005 featured applied ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology as one of the themes, pointing to "situations in which scholars put their knowledge and understanding to creative use to stimulate concern and awareness about the people they study".Presenters were invited to consider issues of advocacy, canonicity, musical literacy, cultural property rights, cultural imperialism, majority-minority relations, application of technologies such as internet and their effects on music and dance.One plenary session explicitly featured applied ethnomusicology 7 and yet another plenary session considered it among the other subjects. 8An important unit at the University of Sheffield is certainly its Center for Applied and Interdisciplinary Research in Music (CAIRM).
The next important step took place in 2005 at the University of California, Los Angeles, which used to have an ambitious "outreach program" in the second half of the 1990s.9This time, the Annual Graduate Student Conference titled Ethnomusicology at Work and in Action offered a straight forward announcement: "As the old notion of a disengaged academic 'ivory tower' continues to lose its relevance, ethnomusicologists are faced with a variety of hands-on roles in the wider community as consultants, activists, specialists, and educators (…) .As it stands, applied ethnomusicology encompasses community activism, world music pedagogy, archiving, and grassroots organizing among many other forms of engagement".The selection of listed topics included, for instance, archiving and museum work, sound media production, ethnographic filmmaking, concert promotion and artist management, cultural policy, world music pedagogy, and more.
The 51st annual meeting of the SEM in Hawaii in 2006 featured a novelty proposed by the Applied Ethnomusicology Section: a workshop, intended to offer practical training in a selected specialized skill.Carrier of the first workshop in this annual series was David Fanshawe.
A symposium titled Ethnomusicology and Ethnochoreology in Education: Issues in Applied Scholarship took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2006.The members of the ICTM's Executive Board, who came to Ljubljana for their meeting, and the other invited scholars presented and evaluated together their immediate experiences and visions of efficient transfer of scholarly knowledge into educational domains.Presentations from contexts around the globe discussed modalities of connections between theory and practice, methods of promoting, teaching and learning of traditional music and dance, and the strategies of preparing textbooks, recordings and other materials for various stages of educational processes (see Kovačič and Šivic 2006).
The ICTM's 39 th world conference in Vienna featured a double panel The Politics of Applied Ethnomusicology: New Perspectives with six participants, each from a different continent, and a meeting at which 44 members agreed to establish a study group with focus on applied ethnomusicology.Following the adoption of the definition and mission statement, the study group on applied ethnomusicology was approved at the Executive Board's meeting in Vienna on 12 July 2007.The first meeting of the study group is taking place in 2008 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.The meeting's title is Historical and Emerging Approaches to Applied Ethnomusicology.

So, What is Applied Ethnomusicology? Four subcategories…
In order to encourage much needed discussion about the definition of applied ethnomusicology at the meeting in Vienna,10 I somewhat provokingly proposed definition taken from a standard American textbook in cultural anthropology, after simple replacement of the the word "anthropology" with "ethnomusicology".The result reads as follows: Applied ethnomusicology is any use of ethnomusicological knowledge to influence social interaction, to maintain or change social institutions, or to direct the course of cultural change (adapted from Spradley and McCurdy 2000:411).
Unlike the transfers of concepts from e.g.linguistics that were subject of debates in the 1980s,11 this transfer from anthropology seemed less problematic.Even though the adapted definition called for further adjustments, with stronger focus on music, its broad social goals seemed to correspond to the intensions of many ethnomusicologists in the applied domain.
Anthropologists usually distinguish among the four subcategories in the applied domain.In all four cases the key-adjectives start with the character "a": action, adjustment, administrative and advocate.Let us add these adjectives to the noun ethnomusicology (rather than to anthropology) and see how it works (adapted from Spradley and Mc-Curdy 2000:411): 1. Action ethnomusicology: any use of ethnomusicological knowledge for planned change by the members of a local cultural group.
2. Adjustment ethnomusicology: (…) that makes social interaction between persons who operate with different cultural codes more predictable.
3. Administrative ethnomusicology: (…) for planned change by those who are external to a local cultural group.
4. Advocate ethnomusicology: (…) by the ethnomusicologist to increase the power of self-determination for a particular cultural group.
In order to provide a more adjusted and refined classification in regard to the field of ethnomusicology, Daniel Shehy proposed the following four strategies (Sheehy 1992): 1. Developing new "frames" for musical performance.2. "Feeding back" musical models to the communities that created them.3. Providing community members access to strategic models and conservation techniques.
4. Developing broad, structural solutions to structural problems.At the 39 th ICTM world conference in Vienna the following definition and a mission statement were adopted: APPLIED ETHNOMUSICOLOGY is the approach guided by principles of social responsibility, which extends the usual academic goal of broadening and deepening knowledge and understanding toward solving concrete problems and toward working both inside and beyond typical academic contexts.
The ICTM STUDY GROUP ON APPLIED ETHNOMUSICOLOGY advocates the use of ethnomusicological knowledge in influencing social interaction and course of cultural change.It serves as a forum for continuous cooperation through scholarly meetings, projects, publications and correspondence.
Although not mentioned as a single key-term in any of the presented definitions, the idea of empowerment seems to be implied in all of them.A scholar empowers members of a local cultural group for either a planned change (Action) or their own decision making (Advocate), persons who operate with different cultural codes (Adjustment) and those external to a local cultural group (Administrative).As I suggested in a conference presentation back in 1995, an ethnomusicologist can under circumstances be seen as a power holder. 12Ethnomusicological knowledge and understanding is a potential agent of social change and it is its application that activates this potential.
As an example, the complex project Azra, that was brought to life in Norway in 1994, contained characteristics of all four categories.Realized through three mutually related sources of empowerment (research, education, music making), it offered to Bosnian refugees in Norway valuable alternative to the general notion of being powerless due to war devastation in their home-country and also due to various communication barriers in the host country (Action).Bosnian and Norwegian musicians joined forces in an ensemble performing Bosnian and Norwegian musics for Bosnian and Norwegian audiences, thus bringing closer together people operating "with different cultural codes" (Adjustment).Lectures and university classes pointing to musical and cultural specifics of the Bosnians assisted the external (Norwegian) decision makers in improving the communication with the Bosnians and consequently in improving the decision-making process (Administrative).The Bosnians, being the primary subjects of this project in applied ethnomusicology, were offered initiative and virtually limitless choices of how to define themselves and how to interact with the Norwegians.The ethnomusicologist's role was to make sure that all options are subject of discussion and that musics serve as acceptable identity markers and bridge building devices (Advocate). 13he application of any knowledge and understanding does not necessarily imply positive aims and/or outcomes.It is reasonably safe to think of application in terms of a tool that can help achieve any results within a continuum stretching from one extreme to the other.In-depth knowledge of theory and method is important as much as in-depth understanding of ethical concerns.The ultimate aim should be betterment of human conditions, with maximal respect to the culturally specific concerns.
12 The 33 rd ICTM's world conference in Canberra.

Picture 1. Bosnian-Norwegian ensemble Azra in concert at the Bosnian cultural center in Oslo (1996)
The five categories mentioned in the introduction to the colloquium at Wesleyan in 2006 -minorities, diasporas, ethnic groups, immigrants, refugees -are already featured in valuable ethnomusicological studies with no adjective "applied".It would obviously be senseless and wrong to label the studies about their musical universes "applied" as long as there is no intervention on behalf of an ethnomusicologist and no expectation of change resulting from his/her intervention.At the same time, the five categories are often placed low on various power scales and thus make good cases for the discussion about empowerment though applied ethnomusicology.The discussion below is based on the practical experiences in Europe, in particular in the three units of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia -Croatia, Kosovo, and Slovenia.Definitions of each category are followed by selected examples of empowerment strategies.

… and Five Groups of People. Some Cases of Empowerment: Minorities
Although the word "minority" implies nothing but "less than half (50%) of some group", minorities are most often understood as national minorities.The working definition used by the ICTM's study group Music and Minorities suggests that minorities are "groups of people, distinguishable from the dominant group for cultural, ethnic, social, religious, or economic reasons". 14hree institutes based in Zagreb and Vienna jointly organized a major public event in Croatia's capital in 1996, focused on public presentation of the edited volume Echo der Vielfalt/Echoes of Diversity (Hemetek 1996). 15Due to the volume's focus on musics of minorities, the event featured musicians from Croatian minority that from the 16th century on resides in the Austrian federal state of Burgenland.In order to bring some balance to this minority empowerment-seeking event, I proposed the inclusion of a non-Croatian minority from within Croatia into the program.This initiative received support and the two minority ensembles -a Croatian from Austria and a Romani (Gypsy) from Croatia -performed one after another.The opinions expressed by people from the audience following the event confirmed my expectation: most of them praised the empowerment of the Croatian minority from Austria, but disliked the presence of "the Gypsies in the temple of Croatian national culture".
This experience confirmed that the initiative of the Croatian ethnomusicologist Jerko Bezić, who in 1985 organized the first scholarly meeting world-wide with the key words "music" and "minorities", 16 was appropriate and that much work had to be done for affirmation of minorities on both sides of political divides.Nowadays, two decades later, Croatian ethnomusicologists can proudly look back after creating and conducting several successful projects that empowered "national minorities" within Croatia (folklore festivals, presentations in the media, publications, recordings).One can also add that the interest in the music of minorities accompanied the major shift in scholars' focus from the missionary interest in "our minority abroad" to "Others from within", with a number of implications to the issues of nationality, citizenship and multiple identities.
Picture 2. Ensemble Romano ilo performs at the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb (1996)

Diasporas
While generally referring to "a dispersion of a group of people from their native land", the use of this term in the territories of former Yugoslavia was commonly related to "our people" in far-away lands stretching from Western Europe to Australia and Canada.In contrast to "minorities", which were considered autochtonous groups inhabiting for centuries the nearby territories on the other sides of political borders, "diasporas" were seen as being composed basically of the 20 th century economic and political emigrants.
Ethnomusicologists from what was Yugoslavia showed only periferal interest in studying their diasporas.One of the reasons may be that musical universes of these territorially uprooted people were of no particular interest to the researchers whose focus was "old, rural, and local" folk music in its original context.Thanks to multicultural policies in many of their new countries, members of diaspora(s) were in a position to express their identities in a variety of ways, often with emphasis on traditional music and dance.It was quite common for their ensembles to invite instructors from homeland or to send their own instructors to summer courses, which were regularly organized in what was Yugoslavia.There was a shared notion among Yugoslavia's ethnochoreologists about creation of choreographies for stage performances as a natural, "applied" extension of their scholarship.This kind of transfer of knowledge and practical skills played an important role in the continuous empowerment of diaspora and as such was in most cases subject to governmental subventions.
My own limited research with Slovene and Croatian diasporas in Australia, South African Republic and USA during the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s indicated several avenues for research and its application.Rather than providing the diasporas with the examples of rural music and dance from their newly independent homelands, I was interested in creating frameworks for discussion about cultural policies and identity formations that would eventually lead towards new means of empowerment.

Ethnic groups
The notion of an ethnic group as "a group of people who identify with one another, especially on the basis of racial, cultural, or religious grounds" seems broader than the notions associated with the other four categories. 17In the political jargon of former Yugoslavia, though, ethnic groups were considered distinctive groups of people, not linked to any of the features of nationhood.In some constitutional documents within former Yugoslavia,18 ethnic group (etnička grupa) was used as a political category, subordinated to the categories of a nation (narod) 19 and national minority (narodnost).20A characteristic case of an ethnic group were the Roma (Gypsies).17 In Mark Slobin's words, ethnicity is "a term of recent origin and much debate" and "a light that fails, having quite different meanings across the wide geographic expanse (…)" (1993:50, 51).
Even though the social and cultural life of the Roma living in former Yugoslavia was better than in many other countries, it does not surprize that their elites were seeking to upgrade the political status to that of a national minority, which would ensure a number of benefits, particularly in the domains of schooling and employment opportunities.Since the status of a national minority by definition implied the existence of the given group's nation state outside of Yugoslavia, the Roma first emphasized India as their homeland and later Egypt.Both attempts have failed.
Several projects based on my research of Romani musicianship in Kosovo fit into the applied domain and their shared goal is the empowerment of the Roma.Resulting products -such as picture exhibition, CD-ROM, video documentary and various writings -were used in various situations to raise both the awareness and the funds.A specific Romani community in the city of Prizren was in a position to use these products -all portraying Kosovo Roma as distinctive musical mediators -to strengthen the quality of communication with the international peace-keeping authorities.The same community was also the receiver of (rather limited) funds earned through the sales of these products.

Immigrants
In 2006, an applied project aimed at the empowerment of asylum seekers and other likely immigrants in temporary "homes for alliens" was started.Slovene ethnologists and cultural anthropologists were introducing them to cultural features, including music, of their expected new home-country Slovenia.

Refugees
One of the basic definitions suggests that a refugee is "a person outside of his or her country of nationality who is unable or unwilling to return because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group".Wars that marked the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s created huge influx of people forced to flee from their homes.Those who re-settled within their own ex-Yugoslav republic were classified as "internally displaced persons", while those who moved out from their republic were classified as "refugees".Both were victims of what became known as "ethnic cleansing".
Some studies nicely pointed to the shared cultural patterns prior to the war (Petrović 1985), followed the dynamics of confrontations (Bringa 1993), and documented the complexity of relations between new neighbors of the same national group, but of different territorial origin (Duijzings 1996).This kind of evidence was used in a number of applied projects, with the intension to counterfight the impact of the overemphasized differences and the logic of nationally based hatred.The refugees, aware that their unfortunate status was caused solely by their belonging to the "wrong" national group, had to be confronted by the fact that the acceptance of the logic of hatred would mean the victory for those who enforced it on them.Music proved to be a useful tool in the proces of refugee empowerment, as described earlier in the context of the Azra project, as well as in a number of other projects. 23hat I found particularly interesting in local understanding of the five globally used categories is the dynamics that relates them. 24For instance, due to the war there were situations in which (a considerable part of) a minority was transformed into refugees (e.g.Serbs from Croatia), but also vice versa -refugees in many cases became a visible minority (e.g.Bosnians in Norway).Or, unrelated to war, most members of an ethnic group (e.g. the inhabitants of an island in Croatia) became a diasporic community in New Jersey and in turn a predominantly English speaking minority within Croatia when they return to their native island for vacations.
There are still cases that remain outside the framework marked by the five given categories, if interpreted in strictly emic terms.Let us take Bosnian Croats as an example.They are not a minority in a political sense because they have status of a constituent national partner and thus claim equal role in political power share in Bosnia and Herzegovina.They do not fit the definition of diaspora either because their centuries long presence in the given territories entitles them to the autochtonous status.Since ethnic groups are understood as unrelated to nationhood, this category also proves 23 The articles about some of them can be found on http://intermusiccenter.org/.

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To paraphrase Adelaida Reyes, the definitions are "an international as well as an intranational concern" (1986:91).
inappropriate.The term immigrant should have been replaced by "emigrant" or rather "migrant" (cf.Reyes 1999) in order to make sense in this case, while the term "internally displaced persons" would need to replace or to be added to refugees.

Conclusion
While attending the SEM conferences and participating in the activities of the Applied Ethnomusicology Section from its start in 1998 I could not avoid thinking that the ongoing presentations were insufficiently aggressive in challenging the boundaries of what an ethnomusicologist could (and should) do within the realm of applied ethnomusicology.In my opinion, applied ethnomusicology is neither an alternative to academia that promises new job openings nor is it solely a "public sector extension" of what we already do within academia.Learning about each others' experiences at the meetings on the both sides of the Atlantic and through listserve discussions is certainly important, but I would argue that particularly the younger generations of ethnomusicologists seek to move forward.Unfortunate situations such as wars and their consequences as much as the ecological state of affairs in today's world make many scholars wish to use their expertise in projects intended to make a difference.Ambitious joint projects with firm theoretical and methodological foundations and emphasized ethical concerns would perhaps serve the purpose.
While serving as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Spring semester 2006, I introduced a graduate course titled Music in Conflict Management: Issues in Applied Ethnomusicology.Theoretical and methodological issues were applied to a variety of territorial and socio-cultural contexts and integrated through the concept of cooperative learning.Music, musicians, minorities, scholarly traditions, censorship, war, and refugees were approached in a variety of contexts (Greece, Israel/ Palestine, Portugal, Spain, Zimbabwe and former Yugoslavia).Discussions of conflicts in these contexts led to the final projects with suggested strategies in conflict management.Empowerment based on ethnomusicological knowledge and understanding was featured in all projects.
I would wish to interpret the increased attention granted to the initiatives leading beyond the usual aims of scholarly engagements on the both sides of the Atlantic and -as this volume suggests -on a global scale as a specific case of empowerment -empowerment for scholars to use their capacities to make our world a better place and to enable applied ethnomusicology to develop its unquestionably rich potentials.

Bibliography
Banks, James A. and Cherry A. McGee Banks (ed.)

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Applied Ethnomusicology and Studies on Music and Minorities -The Convergence of Theory and Practice with Ursula Hemetek, John O'Connell, Adelaida Reyes and Stephen Wild.A particularly important outcome of this session is Hemetek's article about the role of applied ethnomusicology in the process of the political recognition of the Austrian Roma (2006).