Ethnomusicology is a core strength of the UCR Music Department and features a theoretical orientation emphasizing new approaches to ethnographic research with a focus on cultural theory/cultural studies. Faculty members’ specialties include area-studies emphases in Southeast Asia, Asian America, and Latin America. Combined with more than a dozen affiliated faculty in other departments, five world-music performance ensembles, and a new undergraduate major in Music and Culture, this makes the ethnomusicology program at UCR a leader in several areas of research and performance.

The ethnomusicology program is committed to training a new generation of music scholars to bring the insights of cutting-edge cultural theory to original research based on solidly grounded, finely detailed ethnographic fieldwork. Beyond area-studies strengths in Latin America and Asia, our ethnomusicology faculty are known for their engagement with theoretical concerns at the forefront of contemporary research in their field, including music’s relationship with popular culture, race, and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, technology, politics, memory, and globalization. Though our program appeals particularly to graduate students who have a wide-ranging curiosity about music and cultural meaning, drawing on fields ranging from anthropology to cultural studies and literary criticism, we also prepare students for the kinds of far-ranging interdisciplinary conversations that are a hallmark of the field of ethnomusicology today.

Check out a recent UCR Music Department Graduate Student Handbook for more details.
Also, check out the Graduate Division Student Website.