Ethnomusicology, Ethnomathematics. The Logic Underlying Orally Transmitted Artistic Practices

Ethnomathematics is a new domain that has arisen during the last two decades, at the crossroad between history of mathematics and mathematics education. This domain consists in the study of mathematical ideas shared by orally transmitted cultures. Such ideas are related to number, logic and spatial configurations [9,11]. My purpose is to show how ethnomusicology could turn musical materials in this direction. Music will be considered here as a mean of organizing time through patterns of sound events. Thus we shall focus on musical forms and structures, rather than on other aspects of music (such as social aspects for instance). We will ask whether particular forms of traditional music share specific properties, namely combinatorial properties, that could be of some interest from an ethnomathematical point of view.