Philip V Bohlman

Biographic Data

ID119410
NAMEPhilip V Bohlman
GIVEN NAMESPhilip V
FAMILY NAMEBohlman
SIGNATUREBOHLMAN P V
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Chicago
ORCID0000-0002-0216-4055
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS93
TOTAL CITATIONS57
AUTHOR COUNT90
EDITOR COUNT3
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1979
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX4

  • Eurovision Song Contest

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERThe new Grove dictionary of music…2026

  • European American music

    Philip V Bohlman, Stephen Erdely et al.CHAPTERThe new Grove dictionary of music…2024

  • On Survival

    Philip V BohlmanARTICLEEthnomusicology2024References: 11

    An expansion of my 2022 Charles Seeger Lecture, "On Survival" unfolds as a set of reflections on the moment in the history of ethnomusicology that has followed intense periods of response to the COVID-19 pandemic and of racial self-reckoning worldwide. While examining common concerns and practices for ethnomusicology as a field, I do not propose a new theory or method, but rather I argue for the unity of the field rather than the separation of ap…

  • Cursed Questions: On Music and Its Social Practices , by Richard Taruskin

    Philip V BohlmanARTICLEJournal of the American…2021

    I have always thought that Richard Taruskin would find the work of Robert Lachmann (1892–1939) much to his liking. Lachmann might well feature in the dramatis personae of earlier intellectuals and music scholars, many of whom appear in the pages of Cursed Questions as remarkable intellectuals whose contributions to thinking about music often emanated at a distance from the more orthodox traditions of music history and historiography. From the ope…

  • World music matters

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERWorld Music2020

    ‘World music matters’ looks at the sites of music and musical instrument creation under threat from climate change. The word ‘matter’ refers not only to the significance but the materiality of world music and sound itself. As diasporas expand, the routes and borders they once travelled are closing. From the Calais Jungle to Babylon Orchestra, world musicians collaborate with each other and create new fusions. In the 21st century, world music is m…

  • The West and the world

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERWorld Music2020

    ‘The West and the world’ investigates the unequal balance of power in the transcription, recording, and history of world music. World music may have been forged in the ‘Middle Passage’ from Africa to slavery elsewhere, but its musicians were nameless. Their music-making was documented by those with power. Collectors of world music have an anthological impulse, bringing together songs from different cultures. Johann Gottfried Herder’s collection o…

  • Music of the folk

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERWorld Music2020

    If folk music made it possible to imagine world music, it did so from a European perspective. ‘Music of the folk’ examines what concepts of folk and nationality meant to Hungarian composers Bartók and Kodály and explores the global success of folk-inspired Celtic music. Musical pioneers often straddled two cultures, such as Leadbelly, who performed both rural Southern blues and more sophisticated fusion. Leadbelly’s story and others were document…

  • Empire, decoloniality, and the globalization of world music

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERWorld Music2020

    ‘Empire, decoloniality, and the globalization of world music’ takes empire and globalization as points of departure, exploring street music in Romania and wedding music in Kolkata—global music performed locally that collapses the difference between world music and traditional folk music. The globalization of world music has been brought about by the development of modern cities into ‘global cities’, improved recording technologies, easy media acc…

  • Nettl, Bruno

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERThe new Grove dictionary of music…2020

  • In the beginning … Myth and meaning in world music

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERWorld Music2020

    ‘In the beginning ... Myth and meaning in world music’ looks at world music’s real and imagined beginnings. These origins are documented in European missionaries’ observations of indigenous peoples and represented by the first musicians in religious and philosophical writings. Ideas about music in different cultures may be irreconcilable, and some have no word for music at all. Ethnomusicologists like Charles Seeger explored the problem of using …

  • Music of the nations

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERWorld Music2020

    Looking at the contentious history of the Eurovision Song Contest, ‘Music of the nations’ considers the complex relationship between world music, nationalism, and the modern nation-state. In her winning song in 2016, ‘1944’, the Ukrainian entry Jamala switched from English to Crimean Tatar, a political reference to the Russian annexation of Ukraine. Zimbabwe changed its anthem from ‘God Save the Queen’ to an African song via ‘Ode to Joy.’ ‘HaTikv…

  • Between myth and history

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERWorld Music2020

    ‘Between myth and history’ begins with the 1932 Cairo Congress in Arab Music. The Arab contingent sought advice on progress, while the European delegates romanticized traditional Arab music. These contradictions, and Islam’s relationship with music, shaped the life-stories of three figures: 14th-century polymath Ibn Khaldūn; 20th-century Egyptian singer Umm Kulthūm; and ethnomusicologist Robert Lachmann, who found musical echoes of Muslim and Jew…

  • Diaspora

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERWorld Music2020

    ‘Diaspora’ explores the effect of human displacement on world music after the ‘discovery’ of the New World by Columbus in 1492, which set off a chain of diasporas. The music of diaspora addresses both place and homelessness, wandering and the dream of return. Three diasporas are investigated, beginning with the Sephardic diaspora, which arose in turn from the expulsion of Jews from Europe; the displacement of Africans resulting from colonial slav…

  • “La Voz del Pueblo, una Canción, una Frase Notable, una Rima, lograron sobrevivir”. El nacimiento de la Estética Musical y el momento musicológico global

    Open AccessPhilip V BohlmanARTICLEAnuario Musical2020

    En esta historia intelectual de la aparición de la estética musical global, trato del nacimiento de la estética como un campo filosófico moderno y la expansión de la historiografía musical hasta incluir el mundo entero. Estos momentos musicológicos globales son muy evidentes en los primeros escritos de Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), quien canalizaría y mantendría esa confluencia a lo largo de su vasta obra publicada. El título de este artíc…

  • World Music: A Very Short Introduction

    Philip V BohlmanBOOKWorld Music2020Cited by: 22

    World Music: A Very Short Introduction looks at the history of world music and its many definitions. ‘World music’ is more than a marketing term for the music industry. During the Enlightenment, the idea of the ‘folk song’ encouraged European audiences to imagine music from around the world. Technology helped to create the ‘audio moment’—the transformation of sound into material which could be recorded and distributed worldwide. Throughout histor…

  • “And from the Ruins of Time They Blossom”: On the Moral Imperative in Ethnomusicology

    Open AccessPhilip V BohlmanOTHEREthnomusicology Matters2019

  • Musical Borealism

    Philip V Bohlman, Fabian Holt et al.BOOKOxford Handbook of Popular Music…2017

    The chapter develops an original concept of musical borealism, drawing from literatures on European music and cultural history and from orientalism. The chapter looks beyond the simple concept of borealism as an exotic gaze by opening up horizons and offering a series of nuanced distinctions. Basic categories discussed are Nordic myth, Nordic folk and popular music, Nordic global music, Nordic ultra-national music, and non-Nordic Nordic manifesta…

  • Song loves the masses: Herder on music and nationalism

    Johann Gottfried Herder, Philip V BohlmanBOOKSong loves the masses2017

    "Distinguished ethnomusicologist Philip V. Bohlman compiles Johann Gottfried Herder's writings on music and nationalism, from his early volumes of Volkslieder through sacred song to the essays on aesthetics late in his life, shaping them as the book on music that Herder would have written had he gathered the many strands of his musical thought into a single publication. Framed by analytical chapters and extensive introductions to each translation…

  • Music and Nationalism

    Open AccessPhilip V BohlmanCHAPTERWiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of…2015

    Music has represented the nation throughout modern history, but especially since the eighteenth‐century Enlightenment, when Johann Gottfried Herder began to refer to songs associated with modern nation‐states as Volkslieder (folk songs). Music represents the nation by containing either national or nationalist traits; the former employ a nation's internal cultural markers, the latter emphasize contested areas and populations through external cultu…

  • The Cambridge History of World Music

    Open AccessPhilip V BohlmanBOOKCambridge History of World Music2013

    Scholars have long known that world music was not merely the globalized product of modern media, but rather that it connected religions, cultures, languages and nations throughout world history. The chapters in this History take readers to foundational historical moments – in Europe, Oceania, China, India, the Muslim world, North and South America – in search of the connections provided by a truly world music. Historically, world music emerged fr…

  • Music inside out: Sounding public religion in a post-secular Europe

    Open AccessPhilip V BohlmanCHAPTERMusic, Sound and Space2013

  • Ethnomusicology in the United States

    Philip V BohlmanCHAPTERThe new Grove dictionary of music…2013

  • Revival and Reconciliation: Sacred Music in the Making of European Modernity

    Philip V BohlmanBOOKEuropea : Ethnomusicologies and…2013

    Sacred music has long contributed fundamentally to the making of Europe. The passage from origin myths to history, the sacred journeys that have mobilized pilgrims, crusaders, and colonizers, the politics and power sounded by the vox populi—all have joined in counterpoint to shape Europe’s historical longue durée. Drawing upon three decades of research in European sacred music, Philip V. Bohlman calls for a re-examination of European modernity in…

  • Cambridge History of World Music

    Philip V BohlmanBOOKCambridge History of World Music2013

  • Bäuerliche Volksmusik aus Südtirol 1940–42: Originalaufnahmen zwischen NS-Ideologie und Heimatkultur / Peasant Folk Music of South Tyrol 1940–42: Original Recordings Bridging Homeland Culture and Nazi…

    Open AccessPhilip V BohlmanARTICLEYearbook for Traditional Music2011

    Bäuerliche Volksmusik aus Südtirol 1940–42: Originalaufnahmen zwischen NS-Ideologie und Heimatkultur / Peasant Folk Music of South Tyrol 1940–42: Original Recordings Bridging Homeland Culture and Nazi Ideology. 2008. Studien Verlag, Innsbruck. Edited and annotated by Thomas Nußbaumer, with note, “On the South Tyrol Collection,” by Alfred Quellmalz. 180-pp. book with notes in German and English. 33 b/w photos, 29 musical notations. 47-item bibliog…