Course summary

Through a series of part-time online modules, you'll encounter theories and methods from ethnomusicology, folklore, and cultural studies music education that will help you understand the sounds, people, and motivations driving music making and transmission in a variety of traditions. Course Description World music studies encompasses the study of any and all musical activity in the world: Western as well as ‘exotic’, popular as well as classical, amateur as well as professional. The course allows you to specialise in an area of your choice, while providing the opportunity to study musical phenomena from a global perspective. Some students take advantage of Sheffield’s position as a major hub of both English and ‘Celtic’ musical activity to pursue in-depth studies on traditional musics of the British Isles. Others enjoy the opportunity to develop new understanding of musical sounds, practices and cultures from elsewhere in the world. In this course, ‘world music’ is interpreted quite literally as encompassing, in principle, the study of any and all musical activity in the world: Western as well as ‘exotic’, popular as well as classical, amateur as well as professional. Traditional and world musics and their associated cultures are studied through practical methods such as fieldwork and direct participation in music-making, as well as library research and theoretical interpretation. You'll gain both a deeper knowledge of the music and a set of skills for discovering and communicating new knowledge about music.