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.