Anthropology of Music, Part III - Word of the editor

Abstract

Music represents an important aspect of identity of both individuals and groups and an inevitable part of everyday life impregnated with cultural codes that are a part of the symbolic system of our society. Through the analysis of these manifest and latent meanings, a holistic understanding of the musical product within a culture that consumes it is acquired and a better understanding of the wider social, cultural, political and historical processes within the studied community is achieved. Music can therefore serve as a prism for studying a number of anthropological topics that can be conceptualized through it, such as identity, gender, ethnicity, religion, globalization, urbanization, migration, economics, markets, popular culture, symbols, performance, dressing, etc.

The relationship between music and culture in the broadest sense is the central field of study of anthropology of music, a discipline with a growing number of researchers, study programs and published works in the world, within which the interpretation of music in itself, meaning the process of its creation, structure, sound analysis or aesthetic values, is not represented, rather emphasis is placed on studying the meaning that music creates and communicates in everyday life and its perception within a particular culture or globally.

With the idea of popularizing the study of music in the local anthropological community, the national academic conference Anthropology of music was held at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, on March 23, 2018. At the conference, 24 papers were presented.