This article explores the potential use of ethnomusicology in the development of entrepreneurialism amongst Western classical music students studying at UK music colleges. It is argued that both ‘doing’ and ‘reading’ ethnomusicology can encourage students to explore the diverse uses and meanings attached to Western classical music in varied social and geographic contexts. The knowledge garnered through ethnomusicology can then be applied in creative, informed and situational ways by students in the development of entrepreneurial strategies. As a by-product, it is suggested that ethnomusicology can be used to reframe entrepreneurialism as a musical, relational and interactive process.

Traditional communicators known as kanyeleng have increasingly taken on roles in climate change adaptation in The Gambia. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from 2018 to 2019, McConnell and Jallow show that kanyeleng performers contribute to disseminating information about climate change adaptation while also creating the social conditions necessary for citizens to hear and respond effectively to that information. Understandings of climate change in The Gambia intersect with broader concerns about loss of traditional and religious values. Through their performances, kanyeleng work as mediators to resolve tensions associated with climate change adaptation and integrate Indigenous environmental knowledge and climate science.

In all Akan polities, ancestral Black Stools, which belong to the matriclan, are the source of political power and legitimize kingship. Due to the sacred and exclusive nature of stool rituals, Ampene argues that it is the performing arts which define and enhance the power of rulers in the public domain. This ethnographic narrative of the 2014 Grand Worship provides a rare opportunity for the performing arts to project the power and responsibility of the Asantehene when he participates in musical performances and dances.

In this article I examine how, during a period of extreme social unrest, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took up the role of a salsa radio deejay as a show of confidence in his hold on political power and of his solidarity with ordinary Venezuelans. I argue that this all but unprecedented and, for many, controversial course of action by a sitting president provides us with an unusual opportunity to analyse Venezuela's long-standing political crisis. In particular, I highlight how Maduro harnessed salsa's long association with poor Latin Americans, its connection to Venezuela and its pleasurable character to bolster his socialist credentials, and I show how this strategy unleashed a public exchange of criticisms with one legendary salsero (salsa musician), Rubén Blades. By exploring the way music intersects with politics, I show how popular culture is neither ancillary to nor derivative of the country's ever-deepening strife but, rather, constitutive of it.

The panpipe is a musical instrument composed of end-blown tubes of different lengths tied together. They can be traced back to the Neolithic, and they have been found at prehistoric sites in China, Europe and South America. Panpipes display substantial variation in space and time across functional and aesthetic dimensions. Finding similarities in panpipes that belong to distant human groups poses a challenge to cultural evolution: while some have claimed that their relative simplicity speaks for independent inventions, others argue that strong similarities of specific features in panpipes from Asia, Oceania and South America suggest long-distance diffusion events. We examined 20 features of a worldwide sample of 401 panpipes and analysed statistically whether instrument features can successfully be used to determine provenance. The model predictions suggest that panpipes are reliable provenance markers, but we found an unusual classification error in which Melanesian panpipes are predicted as originating in South America. Although this pattern may be signalling a diffusion event, other factors such as convergence and preservation biases may play a role. Our analyses show the potential of cultural evolution research on music that incorporates material evidence, which in this study includes both archaeological and ethnographic samples preserved in museum collections.

This article explores the influence of nationalism and modernity in contemporary Zimbabwe and on the musical lives of Zimbabweans through an examination of muchongoyo, the signature dance–drumming tradition of Zimbabwe’s Ndau communities. Invoking the concept of “Mugabeism,” it illustrates how Shona nationalism and expectations of modernity have partially reshaped muchongoyo in the turmoil of contemporary Zimbabwe. As indigenous practices serve political ends, their values shift. Consequently, there are now two muchongoyos : one rooted in the unique history and values of Zimbabwe’s Ndau community, the other emerging from decades of political employment of indigenous music for the sake of nationalist discourse.