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Ethnomusicology and the Indian Ocean: On the Politics of Area Studies

. This article draws on the recent boom in Indian Ocean studies to build a framework for registering the Indian Ocean in ethnomusicology. We show how the human experiences of movement across the Indian Ocean ex-panse have conditioned the musical traditions of ports and islands, and we put ethnomusicological writings on places like Zanzibar and Oman into dialogue with those from Mauritius and Singapore. We address how ethnomusicology’s area studies paradigm has inhibited musical studies of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR); the specter of comparative musicology; and the perils of modern Indian Ocean populations in light of postcolonial ethnonationalisms.