Tara Browner on Ethnomusicology and Native American Music

Tara Browner
Professor, Ethnomusicology
Interview Conducted by Ryan Guffey
I spoke briefly with Professor Browner about her views regarding Ethnomusicology and her interest in Native American Music. What she had to say was honest and reflective of her independent spirit. Something she might say is inherited from her Native North American Ancestors.
What is an ethnomusicologist and what is their role in academia and society in general?
An ethnomusicologist is an individual who studies music in the context of the music’s culture, as opposed to studying, for example, music analysis or musical texts. Historical musicologists might do something like study manuscripts at monasteries, whereas ethnomusicologists will go out and do field work, and actually observe people creating music and performing music. I think that one of the things that I’m supposed to be doing in academia in terms of teaching is getting it across to students that there are lots of other peoples and cultures out in the world--beyond the one they live in here in LA. To me part of being an ethnomusicologist is teaching people how to be citizens of the world. And it would work the same way in the larger society, as I have been interviewed for some fairly major publications. For example, I did a big interview about ten years ago in US News and World Report. This was just after my book on pow-wows had come out, and they talked to me about Native American music and what was going on in Indian Country right now. To a certain extent I’m a kind of a public advocate for educating people about Native cultures.
How did you become interested in becoming an ethnomusicologist and specifically where does your interest in Native American music come from ?
The interest in the music comes from that my paternal grandfather was Choctaw Indian. And I also have Indian ancestry on the other side of my family--my mother’s side of my family is part Mohawk--but my Grandpa is the one who got me interested in the culture by doing things like taking me to pow-wows when I was a little kid. He’s originally from Oklahoma but he lived out in Riverside, and he would do things like he taking me to a pow-wow at Sherman Indian school. And he would talk to me about Native history, that so what ended up happening is as I went through school--and especially through graduate school--I would hang out with Native students and go to pow-wows. They just became a big part of my social life . . . It’s wrong, though, for people to think that I’m just interested in Native music, because I do like a lot of other things. I really love the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and will be going to Leipzig (in Germany) in a month to hear live performances in Bach’s church. Native American music just happened to be what I was working when I got hired here in Ethnomusicology, but I could just as well teach in a music department (and did before I came here).
If you had to choose one of the Native American groups’ music as your favorite which group would it be and why?
My favorite music just in terms of listening is actually from my mother’s side—it is Iroquoian music. The Iroquois people are up in New York state and Canada (my family is from the Niagara Falls area). And so that music [Iroquois}-is what I listen to. There is the music I listen to and the music I teach, and some of what I teach I don’t listen to outside of the classroom. But Iroquoian music is something I like the sound of, and it’s part of who I am.
What is the greatest challenge ethnomusicologists face in regards to conducting meaningful research?

That’s an interesting question . . . Now I’m going to say something to you that probably not many other people would say. To me the greatest challenge is not letting the garbage that academia demands of you in order to be published get in the way of research that you can do that helps the community you’re working with document their own music. I try to make sure when I write about people that I’m writing using vocabulary that they can read and can enjoy. And if I write something about someone, I want them to be able to show it to their kids. In academic settings there is a lot of disciplinary jargon expected in your research. It’s a real conflict when you’re doing Native American music between writing stuff that you know is kind of a gift to the community--saying thank you to these people that are making your career possible--and writing something that you know can be published in journals and means nothing to the people you’re working with. So to me that is a big challenge. You’re always walking this fine line.
What advice do you have for aspiring ethnomusicologists?
It’s really hard right now because Ethnomusicology is something where most of the jobs--not all of them, but most of them--seem to be at academic institutions like UCLA, and the job market is horrible. It’s just horrible because we are in a recession. So what I would advise people is to be really flexible in terms of all the different kinds of things that they are able to do. Some people work in libraries or archives, and other people go out and do fieldwork, and some people do what Anthony Seeger did and work at the Smithsonian for a few years. So what I would say to people is that you need to be very knowledgeable in your specific area, but at the same time, be very flexible, because being a full time ethnomusicologist in an academic setting is not something as a career choice that is very viable over the next few years. My first academic job—in the early 90s when the economy was also bad--was teaching band, applied percussion, Western music appreciation, and World Music.

Some Additional Info about Tara Browner from the UCLA Ethnomusicology Faculty Website
Classes:Native North American music and dance; Native North American contemporary music; musical imagery of Indians in popular culture; indigenous concepts of music theory; American music.

Academics:Ph.D. Music History: Musicology, The University of Michigan; M.M. Percussion Performance, The University of Colorado, Boulder; B.A. California State University, Sacramento
Tara Browner is the author of Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance 
of the Northern Pow-Wow (University of Illinois Press, 2002), editor of 
Music of the First Nations: Tradition and Innovation in Native North 
American Music (University of Illinois Press, 2009), and editor of 
Songs from "A New Circle of Voices:" The 16th Annual Pow-wow at UCLA
(Music of the United States of America [MUSA], A-R Editions, Madison, 
Wisconsin, 2008). She has published in several major journals including 
Ethnomusicology, The Journal of Musicological Research, and 
American Music, and also regularly presents papers at national and 
international conferences. In addition to her scholarly activities, she is
on the Native American Music screening committee for the Grammy Awards, 
is a pow-wow dancer in the Women's Southern Cloth tradition, and a 
professional percussionist and timpanist. Her current research focus is 
on manifestations of pow-wow culture in Northern Europe.