The conditions of global discourse of diversity: Music Encyclopedias, Dictionaries and Ethnomusicology

Resumo

Discourse of diversity acquired positive value in the present day and enough strength so as to organize some of the global enunciations and even those which are proposed to be universal. Ethnomusicology has embodied this discourse of diversity, so as to propose the study of the musics of the world without hierarchies, comprehending these musics according to the system of thought of their own cultures. It makes this science typical of our present time, and having it as privileged corpus of analysis may shed light upon the conditions for the forging of the discourse of diversity, revealing the forces involved on it and who is in the position to pronounce it. This article attempts to understand  those issues, basing its research on music dictionaries and encyclopedias from the past three centuries, providing a historical overview for comparison, as much as a lucid picture of the present. These objects are valuable, since they are supposed to reunite all the human knowledge within their areas, complexifying the relation between universal and particular. As in the study here presented about the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, such corpuses may reveal that the discourse of diversity has its rules of differences and inequalities.