World Music Studies (Taught)

This distance learning course combines annual residential weeks in Sheffield with longer periods of internet-supported study which means students can be anywhere in the world. 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. Students gain both a deeper knowledge of the music and a set of skills for discovering and communicating new knowledge about music. The courses are intended for musicians, educators and enthusiasts who want to know more about traditional and world musics and about ways of studying and understanding music in its social and cultural context. World Music Studies 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.