User:Qian Mateo/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
History of ethnomusicology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

[This is for a class]

I chose to evaluate this article looking at the history of ethnomusicology because one of the first courses I took in my academic career was an ethnomusicology class at a different university. This topic is important because ethnomusicology is cultural anthropology with an emphasis on the development of the many worldly styles and genres of music. Moreover, it analyzes how the environment of different cultures, as well as their histories and their values, developed their personal style of music. My first impression of this article was that it is written from an American lens with the first passage about ethnomusicology focusing on American anthropologists' attempt to preserve the folk music of the United States such as the "Spirituals" of enslaved people as well as the mountain music of the Appalachians. It claims that an American Priest founded ethnomusicology in the late 19th century. I doubt this claim as people have been studying the history and culture surrounding the musical genre for a long time before the late 19th century. Even so, I did enjoy reading about ethnomusicology's development into a field from the American perspective.

Evaluate the article

(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section


 * This article does include an introductory paragraph with an introductory sentence that summarizes what ethnomusicology is with the rest of the paragraph going into a short history of ethnomusicology, its split from comparative musicology, and a push to analyze Western music in the same fashion as how early ethnomusicologist analyzed "non-western" music.
 * The lead does include a brief description of the article's major sections.
 * There is no information in the lead that is not included later, and expanding upon later, in the article.
 * I believe that the lead is concise, the first sentence in the lead section is well formed and gave me an exact definition of ethnomusicology with the rest of the paragraph preparing me to read about folklore, comparative musicology, and the eventual development of ethnomusicology as a scholarly discipline.

Content


 * The article's content is relevant to the topic, it does not branch out to things unrelated to the present topic nor does it trail away from presenting the ideas that led to the development of ethnomusicology.
 * The content is up to date with the author using examples of ethnomusicological studies from 2020, including a survey source from 2022.
 * The only content I would so is missing would be a history of musicology or just anthropology in music prior to the 1800s. As we understand now people like Zhang Qian are considered the earliest anthropologists although only 30 years ago, Americans or Europeans would have gained the title as the first. I think a push into looking at the histories of other cultures' ethnomusicological ventures would give a better timeline of the development of the discipline.
 * It does attempt to deal with equity gaps by focusing on how early African music was all lumped together by ethnomusicologists of the 1800s with present-day anthropologists condemning the assortment and instead are now dealing with each culture of African separately when data collecting with comparisons only happening after-the-fact.

Tone and Balance


 * The article is neutral
 * There are no claims that appear heavily biased.
 * The American development of ethnomusicology is too overrepresented and other countries and cultures' ethnomusicological ventures are very underrepresented.
 * Minority viewpoints are present with the article alluding to a Ghanian ethnomusicologist condemning many elements that were staples of the discipline previously.
 * This article does not persuade and merely lays the history of ethnomusicology and presents the discipline in a well-informed manner.

Sources and References


 * All sources are backed by secondary sources of information.
 * Sources are thorough and do reflect some of the available literature, again, maybe more emphasis on the development of the field from other cultural perspective and focus on other large-scale ethnomusicological studies such as in South America or East Asia.
 * Some sources are from the 20th centuries but this article does include many sources that are current.
 * A majority of the sources are from men, who are predominantly white and does not include a diverse spectrum of authors.
 * There are better sources to the history of ethnomusicology such as Oxford's bibliography page on the history of ethnomusicology.
 * The sources used in the article are very good, it needs more diversity in its authors however.
 * All the citation links work.

Organization and Writing Quality


 * The article is well written, concise, clear, and easy to read.
 * Article has no grammatical or spelling errors.
 * The article is well-organized. (breaks down the points made in the lead section)

Images and Media


 * Only one image is included on the article which shows a kulintang, an instrument of southeast Asia. This does little enhance the topic but does show an example of what has been documented for the rest of world through ethnomusicology.
 * It is visually appealing, but there should be more images.
 * Does adhere to copyright.

Talk Page Discussion


 * There are not conversations surrounding this article at the present time.
 * This article is part of three WikiProjects: Anthropology, Roots Music, and Folklore.

Overall Impressions


 * This received a B-Class rating and I am inclined to support this.
 * The article is strong in its presentation of the American development of ethnomusicology and does well in presenting a Ghanian perspective of the discipline.
 * It fails in its discussions on major projects currently happening or history projects in the field. There are little subsections discussing more work done in the field.
 * I think for just being about the history, the article is well-developed.