Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2019
As many of the articles in this volume of the Yearbook for Traditional Music celebrate the first forty years of the ICTM and the concerted, if indeed polyphonic, voice that that organization has provided the study of traditional music throughout the world, they evoke a mood of reflection and reexamination of the intellectual history of ethnomusicology. Reflection was abundantly evident as the ICTM paused in 1987 to call attention to its achievements with a grand commemoration in Berlin, itself taking stock of a 750-year history. But the reflective mood of the ICTM's fortieth year was not simply a matter of panegyrizing the past; rather, it seemed equally concerned with reexamining the present and future in light of that past, with contrasting the old and the new, with juxtaposing them and encouraging ethnomusicologists to welcome that which has more recently come to shape our understanding of music throughout the world.