The Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology Turns 60
In the following interview with mdw Magazine, Ursula Hemetek—former head of the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology and founder of the Music and Minorities Research Centre (MMRC)—joins us together with the department’s current head Marko Kölbl to look back upon its eventful history, share insights on current developments, and discuss present-day political challenges.
What was it that motivated the founding of the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology back in 1965?
Ursula Hemetek (UH): We once conducted a lengthy interview with department founder Walter Deutsch about precisely this. In his telling, there’d been a determination at the political level whereby an Academy (which the mdw then was) that provided students with artistic instruction and had them make music should also provide theoretical knowledge. As a consequence, 1965 witnessed the establishment of our first two research departments: the Department of Folk Music Research, referred to back then as the “Deutsch Department”, and the Department of Music Sociology, known as the “Blaukopf Department”. Walter Deutsch was primarily a composer and musician, but he also engaged with folk music. According to him, the original idea behind the department had been an interest—especially on the part of composers—in gleaning inspiration from European folk music and figuring out its connections with classical music. Deutsch himself went on to compile a catalogue of European folk song melodies, and it was with the establishment of the department that research on folk music formally arrived in the academic realm.
Marko Kölbl (MK): The desire to institutionalise this discipline had already been there before 1965. Even during the National Socialist era, efforts had been made—but those were met with rigorous internal rejection. And it was also the position of the [folk music organisation] Österreichisches Volksliedwerk, back then, that folk music had no place in an academic context. During the post-war years, still prior to our department’s founding, renewed calls for institutionalisation emerged—albeit with a different slant, oriented more towards comparative musicology. Those likewise came to nought. It’s interesting how the desire to provide the discipline with an institutional foothold had been there even before 1965—and how our department only emerged after several failed attempts.
What kind of status did minority studies enjoy in Austria back when the department was founded?
UH: Back in 1965, research on minorities was non-existent—at least in the field of folk music research. And the discipline of ethnomusicology as such didn’t yet exist in Austria. What you had was comparative and systematic musicology at the University of Vienna. Research on minorities at our department really only began when I started working for Walter Deutsch in 1987. My initial assignment was to compile protocols of sound recordings and also do musical transcriptions of material from field research on Austrian folk music. I’d already done work on wedding songs in Stinatz—which is to say, songs from Burgenland—and written my dissertation on Burgenland Croats, in connection with which I’d also already worked together with Deutsch. His knowledge here was as comprehensive as it was elsewhere—and since Burgenland Croats lived in Austria, he also viewed musical expressions by minorities as being within the scope of folk music research. This wasn’t during the ’60s, though; it was in the late 1980s.
So research on minorities only began much later?
UH: Yes—during the late ’80s, early ’90s. Back then, research on minorities was connoted as having to do with foreign language-speakers. And in our field as it stood at the time, folk music research was about one’s own music and ethnomusicology about that of others—which was just as untenable then as it is now.
How have the associated themes and/or areas of research changed or perhaps even expanded in the meantime?
MK: Back when the department was founded, it was clear that Alpine Austrian folk music was the topic of research. Today, however, our master’s degree programme doesn’t specify what musical style one has to express oneself in artistically—or the style of music with which applicants can present themselves at the entrance exam. It’s perhaps logical that 20 years after the end of World War II and 10 years after the founding of the Republic, there’d been a focus on placing “Austrianness” in the foreground. But there wasn’t yet any awareness of how “Austrian” also included minorities whom research should’ve been taking into account. Whereas later on, the department also began viewing people who’d migrated to Austria as belonging to Austria—thereby also coming to view their music as relevant to its research.
UH: It was in the course of my Roma research that I first learned just how many different groups there are. It’s naturally the case that only some of them are what people would call autochthonous, with the largest group being Roma who arrived as labour migrants—especially from former Yugoslavia. It was at this point that the department came to include migration studies—which moved quite strongly to the fore in 1995 at the beginning of the Bosnian War, when we were joined by a young researcher from Sarajevo. As part of a third-party-funded project, we engaged with musical expressions by Bosnian refugees in Austria. That was research on displacement, which was new, and we did discuss whether it actually counted as minority research—which, of course, it did. During this period, the notion of minorities developed in a political sense. Prior to that, Austria’s minorities had been defined as its traditional ethnic groups. But the political discourse then saw this notion expand to include various groups who’d suffered discrimination—such as sexual minorities and, of course, migrants.
A more current development is the folk music boom of recent years. Is this also having an impact on research?
MK: I wouldn’t say that folk music as such has been booming. That’s more true of folk-influenced or ethnically tinged popular music, which is also an important area of research in our discipline. I accord great relevance to these musical styles; they’re relevant to their audiences, and that has to be taken seriously. From a research perspective, it’s interesting how certain musicians who perform folk-influenced popular music currently boast large audiences in Austria while we’re seeing a simultaneous a decline in the significance of Austrian Alpine folk music. Ethnically tinged popular music catering to Austria’s migrant communities, for its part, is extremely important and definitely seeing a huge boom. Regardless of whether it’s turbo folk for the Serbian community, Afghan pop for Afghan refugees, or Croatian pop for Burgenland Croats—their respective relevance is pretty similar.
Are these developments having an impact on your student figures?
MK: They definitely play a role in terms of who’s working at our department on what themes. And it’s no surprise how we have so many international students here who’ve brought their own musical traditions along with them, which represents a huge enrichment for the mdw as a whole.
UH: Even in the 1990s, 48 percent of our students were from abroad. Back then, though, nobody took an interest in what they were bringing with them. I suggested quite some time ago that applicants should be asked at their entrance examinations whether they had additional musical competencies. That suggestion didn’t end up being implemented. But what we did do was our study on bi- and/or multi-musicality, where we distributed a classic sociological questionnaire to IGP master’s degree students that aimed to find out what other musical languages they spoke. We asked them whether they defined themselves as bi-musical or multi-musical, and 67 percent answered in the affirmative. We went on to conduct a further bi-musicality study in 2015 that encompassed in-depth interviews with selected students. That provided good evidence for how we needed an ethnomusicology master’s degree programme—though, to be honest, I hadn’t initially been thinking of a fully fledged MA programme. All I was looking to do was implement curricular changes. But August Schmidhofer, who headed a programme of study at the University of Vienna, then approached me and suggested we set up a joint MA programme in ethnomusicology. We then actually did begin working on an inter-university curriculum, but that effort failed for multiple reasons. So we then said, “Okay, we’ll just do it ourselves.” The exact details of the entrance examination presented some difficulties at first, but we’ve since resolved that issue.
How do art and scholarship relate at the department?
MK: Our aim is to provide in-depth academic training, but our entrance exam concerns mainly artistic competencies. That seems like a mismatch, but it’s productive all the same. My very personal opinion is that in ethnomusicology, it always helps if you have artistic competencies of your own. It’s not essential; you don’t have to be a musician to do ethnomusicological research. But it is helpful because it enables you to perceive music in a different way as you go about investigating and analysing it. This double-role of musician and researcher is also something that’s very much anchored in our department’s history.
UH: It used to be the case that it was unusual for research departments to play host to the artistic realisation of their subject matter. That’s what fascinated me so much when I arrived here: people would make music based on what they’d learned in their field research, and there were also high-quality presentations of such music onstage.
MK: It always depends on whether or not the spaces for something exist. And for traditional music, the academic realm hadn’t offered any. It was in the music education field that it first became truly institutionalised here thanks to Rudi Pietsch and his teaching—and then through this degree programme. One might, of course, question why our field has just one master’s degree programme that has to do everything. Other areas are divided between accordingly themed degree programmes oriented toward performance, research, and education—but that’s due in part to how highly people value certain musical styles. Many of the musical styles dealt with in ethnomusicology are accorded very little value—which isn’t to blame specific institutions or protagonists; it’s simply a reflection of global structural inequalities.
UH: As our research departments began working together more closely, there was a shift in thinking. Before, the watchword had been: scholarship serves artistic reflection—that’s it. So artists were supposed to reflect, and scholarship was responsible for seeing that they did so. It was a slow process for everyone to realise that we don’t just serve reflection; we also represent our disciplines.
MK: We now have more opportunities to conceive of research as well as artistic practice entirely anew—as pursuits that aren’t separate from each other. And while artistic research is still in its nascence, it indeed does also offer some approaches. So one topic for arts universities is to think of these two pursuits in combination without being scared that either of them could somehow get watered down as a result.
Ms. Hemetek, you received the Wittgenstein Award in 2018 and used the cash prize to found the MMRC the following year. Why was it important to you to establish a dedicated research centre at the mdw?
UH: Because internationally visible academic anchoring of our discipline in the form of an institution dedicated to ethnomusicological minority studies hadn’t yet been achieved anywhere in the world. The MMRC is the world’s only centre for music-related research on minorities. It’s also important to me to encourage and support those who are embarking on their research journeys, and I’d like for the field to be structurally anchored in a way that enables early-stage researchers to pursue their work. What’s more, it was important to me that such a research centre be founded at the mdw—because it’s this institution, after all, that I had to thank for my own career; it’s where I’d always worked. So it was only logical.
What was it like to receive such a prestigious award?
UH: It was on a Saturday that I was told I’d been selected to receive the Wittgenstein Award—and they also told me they’d need a text describing my research emphasis and explaining what I’d plan to do with the money. They wanted this text by the following Tuesday, until which time I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. I did, however, have to inform Rector Sych—and on Monday, a meeting with all of the relevant people was called. It was on that Monday that we actually agreed on everything, which enabled me to present my idea that Tuesday. We ultimately opened the centre in November 2019. I think that was a sensible use of the EUR 1.4 million I’d been awarded, and it’s been going very well.
What are the concrete research emphases at the MMRC?
UH: Our first predoctoral fellow was Ioannis Christidis, who did his dissertation on Syrian refugees. Anja Brunner then came to us with her entire research project, which was third-party funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Her work likewise revolved around Syrian refugees. So initially, there was a research emphasis on displacement—specifically concerning refugees from Syria. Since then, things have shifted a bit. In 2023, we initiated a strong Roma emphasis to mark the 30th anniversary of the recognition of the Roma/Romnja as an ethnic group in Austria. One upshot of this is the digital exhibition Ružake Gila, which draws almost exclusively on our department’s archive. And we’ve also since established the international journal Music & Minorities (M&M), which is published by mdwPress.
What’s currently being researched at the MMRC?
UH: We’re now running the initiative Advancing Music and Minorities Research (AMMR), through which we support researchers’ third-party funding applications to the tune of EUR 8,000. And I’d be very remiss here if I neglected to mention Malik Sharif, who’s now my deputy at the MMRC. He’s definitely the person who’s most well-versed where third-party funded ethnomusicological projects in Austria are concerned. Lots of things related to funding applications have been running better thanks to the support he’s been providing to researchers. We currently have three projects underway, of which two have already been approved by the FWF: one is Amos Darkwa Asare’s project We Sing to Live: The Songs of a Minority Fishing Community in Ghana, and the other is Christian Friedrich Poske’s project Sounds of Trauma: Naga Song Responses to Political Conflict in India. Both researchers are now based here and opening up entirely new angles with their projects. In addition, we also frequently conduct internally funded projects like the digital exhibition Ružake Gila. Our next major item is an FWF-funded “principle investigator project” by Jelena Gligorijevic, which will begin in May and deal particularly with queer and female aspects of the “Yugo” music scene in Vienna. And just prior to that, February 2026 will see us host a big forward-looking symposium in light of how the original Wittgenstein funds will be running out, which will mark an inflection point. So the idea will be to look back with all those who’ve been involved so far while also developing a vision for the future.
To what extent does the MMRC’s work overlap with that of the department?
MK: If you look at who’s working on what topics at the department, most of them are doing research that relates to minorities. So in this respect, you could say there’s an overlap. But as a department where work concerning minorities is clear emphasis, it’s a dream to co-exist with a research centre at one’s own institution that can focus mainly on third party-funded work and open up new realms to explore. Because since we’re a regular university department, it goes without saying that we’re not focussed exclusively on research—we also do lots of other things, especially teaching.
UH: You also benefit from the research we produce. And this separation was important to me right from the beginning, partly in terms of interfacing with the outside world. A university department, after all, has other responsibilities. The two are associated with each other, of course, seeing as we’re situated at the same university. But at the MMRC, we can reach circles that the department doesn’t.
MK: Exactly. And we, as a department, can’t concern ourselves primarily with research and the support of early-stage researchers.
Why is it important to not only pursue theoretical research on dance, vocal, and instrumental music in specific traditional styles but also introduce it to a wider audience through public events?
MK: If the mdw truly is the “University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna”, then it has to be possible to allow space for everything that falls under the term “music”. Concerts and workshops nourish a pluralistic understanding of music that doesn’t exclude specific groups of people, and they’re a reminder of how there’s also a world outside of Austria, outside of the big concert venues, and outside of Europe. It’s fundamentally about recognising just what all the world has to offer. And in the present political situation, it’s important to understand that we’re not the only people who exist: the case is much rather that we live in a world where different people with differing backgrounds, desires, and needs coexist—be it within one’s own circles or viewed from a global, geopolitical perspective.
What challenges will the department have to take on in the years ahead?
MK: At our 60th anniversary symposium, we had a roundtable discussion where we asked: What’s the significance of our discipline in light of the authoritarian shift we’re now experiencing? Musical styles that are traditional and/or somehow coupled with identities are experiencing an awful lot of misuse. We can observe this in various regions of the world. They’re being instrumentalised for nationalistic efforts, sometimes defined as part of the “leading culture” so as to exclude other forms of cultural expression. Our discipline, however, stands for an antiracist and decolonial understanding of music and for the centring of musical and cultural diversity as well as transculturality. All of which contradicts numerous postulates advanced by those right-wing conservative political movements that are growing ever larger in Europe and worldwide. In this light, our department needs to think about how to position ourselves in a good way. That’s the story at the political meta-level. At the level of our university, I think it would be really important for our discipline to be anchored even more strongly in the curricular offerings of other programmes of study—and, for that matter, as a dedicated bachelor’s degree programme. It’s a long-term project, to be sure—but we do indeed need a bachelor’s degree programme. And why not also have an artistically oriented one? I think we’ve reached a point in societal debates and developments in 2025 where cultural diversity has ceased to be some weird niche demand and is instead being accepted as reality.
In the future, though, it will also be about filling vacant positions, supporting young researchers, and—closely associated therewith—continuing to develop our research emphases. Development of this sort is a central theme for which those who are active in this area bear a lot of responsibility, and I’m really happy that the people working at our department are very well positioned, well networked, and recognised and esteemed in their respective fields internationally.
Does the mdw bear a special responsibility toward society in view of our era’s political challenges?
MK: Absolutely. For example, the research I’m doing for my habilitation thesis concerns Afghan music in exile and hence also the Taliban’s prohibition of music, as part of which they likewise abolished all institutions of musical training. In the context of this research, students of Kabul University’s now-closed Music Department begin studying at the mdw in 2024 thanks to active support from our rectorate. I see a huge responsibility, here. After all, spaces like the mdw take on an enormous degree of additional importance when they become homes in exile to forbidden musical cultures. And since there exists no global plan for dealing with such situations, our department and the mdw as a whole have suddenly come to bear weighty responsibilities that will prove to be historically significant over the long term. So we repeatedly see political responsibilities opening up in our discipline, simply due to how it engages with musical diversity of our world.
