(b Guildford, 22 Oct 1928; d Belfast, 24 Jan 1990). British anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. Raised in the Anglican environment of Salisbury Cathedral close, his father, the cathedral architect, was closely concerned with the restoration of the Sarum rite and with the Dolmetsch early music revival. Blacking served as a commissioned officer in the Coldstream Guards, with active service in Malaya (19489), where the exposure to Malay, Chinese and Indian cultures was a formative experience. He read anthropology and archaeology at Cambridge (194952) with Meyer Fortes and in 1954 he was appointed musicologist in Hugh Tracey's International Library of African Music, Johannesburg. From 1956 to 1958 he carried out 22 months of fieldwork in the Venda area of Northern Transvaal, establishing his international reputation as an ethnomusicologist. In 1959 he was appointed lecturer in social anthropology and African government at the University of Witwatersrand, and in 1965 he was appointed professor and head of the department. In 1970 he was made professor of social anthropology at Queen's University, Belfast, which under his direction became an internationally renowned centre for ethnomusicology, attracting students from many parts of the world, particularly Africa. He was president of the Society for Ethnomusicology (19823) and founded the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology.
Blacking's reputation was established by How Musical is Man?, a book based on the John Danz Lectures he delivered at the University of Washington in 1971. He championed the anthropological approach in ethnomusicology, while not underplaying the musicological side of the discipline. A keen classical pianist throughout his life, his theorizing about music passed through a number of stages, from functionalism, to structuralism and phenomenological transactionalism, and his thinking was much influenced by his anthropologist colleagues at Queen's. He published significant articles on most of the debated issues in ethnomusicology, and in later years he returned to a concern with dance that had started with his research on Venda girls' initiation schools.
Musical Instruments of the Malayan Aborigines, Federation Museums Journal, nos.12 (19545), 3252
The Role of Music in the Culture of the Venda of the Northern Transvaal, Studies in Ethnomusicology, ed. M. Kolinski, ii (New York, 1965), 2052
Venda Children's Songs: a Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis (Johannesburg, 1967)
Tonal Organization in the Music of Two Venda Girls' Initiation Schools, EthM, xiv (1970), 154
How Musical is Man? (Seattle, 1973)
An Introduction to Venda Traditional Dances, Dance Studies, ii (1977), 3456
ed.: The Anthropology of the Body (London, 1977) [incl. Towards an Anthropology of the Body, 128]
Some Problems of Theory and Method in the Study of Musical Change, YIFMC, ix (1977), 126
Political and Musical Freedom in the Music of Some Black South African Churches, The Structure of Folk Models, ed. L. Holy and M. Stuchlik (London, 1980), 3562
The Structure of Musical Discourse: the Problem of Song Text, YTM, xiv (1982), 1523
The Concept of Identity and Folk Concepts of Self: a Venda Case Study, Identity: Personal and Socio-Cultural, ed. A. Jacobson-Widding (Stockholm, 1983), 4765
A Commonsense View of All Music: Reflections on Percy Grainger's Contribution to Ethnomusicology and Music Education (Cambridge, 1987)
Ethnomusicology and Prehistoric Music-Making, The Archaeology of Early Music Cultures, ed. E. Hickmann and D.W. Hughes (Bonn, 1988), 32936 Verlag fόr systematische Musikwissenschaft
The Biology of Music-Making, Ethnomusicology: an Introduction, ed. H. Myers (London, 1992), 30114
ed. R. Byron: Music, Culture & Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking (Chicago, 1995) [incl. list of writings]
J. Baily: John Blacking and his Place in Ethnomusicology, YTM, xxii (1990), 1221 [incl. list of writings]
K. Howard: John Blacking: an Interview Conducted by Keith Howard, EthM, xxxv (1991), 3576
J. Baily, ed.: Working with Blacking: the Belfast Years, World of Music, xxxvii/2 (1995)
JOHN BAILY