“关于音乐的人类学”和“音乐人类学”的区别是什么？一个看似枯燥且无聊的问题，其实反映出两种关于音乐的存在论。音乐人类学家Anthony Seeger这样来对比这两个概念：在"关于音乐的人类学”(the anthropology of music)中, 音乐是作为社会文化的一种外在的表现形式的；而在“音乐人类学”(概念上是Musical Anthropology，在学科建制上是ethnomusicology)里，音乐则是作为一种文化意识的根源而存在。原话是这样的：
“an anthropology of music looks at the way music is a part of culture and social life. By the way of contrast a musical anthropology looks at the way musical performances create many aspects of culture and social life. Rather than study music in culture (as proposed by Alan Merriam 1960), a musical anthropology studies social life as a performance. Rather than assuming that there is a pre-existing and logically prior social and cultural matrix withinin which music is performed, it examines the way music is part of the very construction and interpretation of social and conceptual relationships and processes (Seeger, 2004, xiv).
