Music Theory in Ethnomusicology
global.oup.com
During the 1960s and 70s some ethnomusicologists formed relationships with music-makers and ritual specialists in an attempt to interpret how they understood their musical actions. Subsequently ethnomusicologists have studied the respects in which explicit and implicit theory is involved in communication of musical knowledge.

Blum’s book, in addition to Floris Schuiling & Emily Payne’s Material Cultures of Music Notation: New Perspectives on Musical Inscription (as well as Schuiling’s Notation Cultures: Towards an Ethnomusicology of Notation) have been very helpful in framing a number of issues that have come up while compiling the Music Notation Timeline.

The quote below (from the description) shouldn’t have to be said, but as I continue working on a survey of bi/polymusical education globally, it’s really remarkable how much more unintentionally inclusive a number of music theory programs are in countries outside Europe and North America.

They are assessing the extent to which musical terminologies of diverse languages can be interpreted in relation to general concepts without imposing the assumptions and biases of one body of existing theory. That exercise is increasingly recognized as a necessary effort of decolonization.