ABET

Associação Brasileira de Etnomusicologia

 I register the decease of Professor Bruno Nettl, one of the most prominent references in international Ethnomusicology and who has honored us with short but noteworthy participation in the history of our association - National Association of Ethnomusicology (Associação Brasileira de Etnomusicologia - ABET). Professor Nettl pronounced the keynote speech of our very first national meeting, in Recife (state of Pernambuco, Northeastern Brazil), 2002.

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Bruno Nettl formed successive generations of researchers, by providing memorable seminars and being a sensitive academic advisor. Always showing his erudition, never in a pedant way, Nettl used to demonstrate extreme attention to the interests of his interlocutors at the events he regularly and attentively organized as well as at the ones where he actively used to participate - and there were many social events promoted by him at Urbana-Champaign, at his residence or public spaces.

As a graduate student at he University of Illinois, I believe I have assisted all of Nettl's seminars, which were unique opportunities to come to know the field of Ethnomusicology in depth - from an anglo-germanic tradition and in interplay with similar fields. It would be impossible to make a review of all of his publications in this short note, but I would highlight some of them that have circulated in Brazil and Mondial scale and others that have circulated in maybe more restricted spaces - each one, however, of enormous importance in his works as a whole.

In the case of the most acknowledged are "The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty- One Issues and Concepts" (the "Red book", as he used to joke, alluding to the famous Mao Tse Tung's compendium), having had several editions and inclusions attentive to the changes in the field since the first edition, in 1983; his "Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology", 1964; and the provocative "Heartland Excursions", 1995, which takes a critical view about values and practices at music colleges, based on participant observation at his institution in USA. Although it was centered in an institution from the US, many scholars have recognized the research as important for reflection upon other territories, including below the Equador line. Among works maybe less acknowledged but at my point of view as well as important or even more, I would highlight "Blackfoot Musical Thought", 1989, an ethnographic study about the concepts involved in the music-making of Blackfoot society; the compilations edited by him, as "Eight Urban Musical Cultures", 1978, and "In the Course of Performance", 1994, edited with Melinda Russel, both pioneer contributions to aspects that completely changed the course of Ethnomusicology.

In 2002, Bruno Nettl accepted the invitation of ABET to be the keynote speaker at our first national meeting in Recife - it was his first and only travel to the country. In Recife, besides being enchanted by the Boa Viagem beach, he seemed positively impacted by the intensity of the meeting, asking sometimes if one or another next to him could translate to English the main topics discussed. Before the meeting he had been in Rio de Janeiro, participating, accompanied by Anthony Seeger, on the premiere of the series "Música em Debate" (Music on Debate), since then promoted by the research group "Laboratório de Etnomusicologia" (research group on Ethnomusicology) of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Both keynote speeches were published in Portuguese.

Translated parts of the note written by prof. Samuel Araújo (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) on the behalf of the National Association of Ethnomusicology (Associação Brasileira de Etnomusicologia – ABET, Brazil).