Suggestions for an Ethnomusicological Study of the Guitar: A Theoretical Review

Abstract

From a sample of the research into the guitar indexed in the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), we find approaches that both seek to explore its performative and technical possibilities, and the peculiarities of its compositional language, as well as make visible names previously unknown to the literature or reflect on the pedagogical trends in the teaching of the instrument. However, a shortage of works which help to understand the guitar as a key to social readings and the guitar practice as ethnographic data have been identified. With the purpose of increasing references for an ethnomusicological study of the guitar, the article (re) presents and contextualizes diverse theories that explain its social life, its form, function and meaning, as well as its intercultural readings.