The growing interest in the visual dimension of musical performance practice and the use of
film as a medium of presentation and research in Ethnomusicology is related to the increasingly
wide use of visual ethnographic methods of research and representation and to the technological
development of modern visual tools used today in field research. Film can document both the
aural and visual dimensions of a musical performance and has the capability to represent the
lives of musicians in their physical and temporal context to analyse musical structures and to
have an ethnographic approach of musical performance. All features are related to
contextualization that can best be communicated and represented by audiovisual means.
Audiovisual Ethnomusicology whose subject is the ethnomusicological film is being con-figured
as a new branch of Ethnomusicology. The main aim of this book is to outline its history the
diverse theoretical and methodological approaches adopted by the ethno-film-makers as well as
the different ways to use the visual medium in the re-presentation of musical cultures.
