Abstract
It has long been recognized, both within the discipline and externally, that ethnomusicologists focus on interdisciplinarity, that we have been inspired by and borrowed theories and methodologies from several disciplines, including not only anthropology, but also linguistics, ethnic studies, cultural studies, and more recently, cultural geography, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, and visual and media-technology studies. There is no problem with that. The importance of interdisciplinarity and its benefits does not have to be defended. Many universities are trying hard to develop what they call "course threads"--groups of courses focusing on particular themes, issues, or practices across disciplines to encourage students to develop a deep knowledge about the theme, issue, or problem in question from various perspectives. The difficulty is that ethnomusicology to a large extent continues to be viewed by those from many of the disciplines from which it borrows in the arts, humanities, and social sciences as contributing little theory of its own.
