This lecture offers a critical reading of the status and role of sound recording in the history of ethnomusicology, before formulating a number of theoretical proposals for shifting the discipline's main focus to locally recorded music and its ecosystem. Based on an investigation carried out in the recording studios of Bamako (Mali) since 2014, we see the consequences of this shift in the practice, tools and issues of ethnomusicology, but also in the positioning, and even more so the authority of the researcher vis-à-vis his object.
Emmanuelle Olivier is a 1st class researcher at the CNRS.
Next lecture: 6 June