Introduction

This introductory chapter lays the groundwork for the volume, outlining an “ethnomusicology of Christianity” directed at ways of defining and historicizing the relationship between Christianity and its musics in transnational and cross-cultural perspectives. It identifies the movement of Christian musics across space and time, tracking their circulation and transformation over a long historical canvas, as well as the broad range of modalities of encounter and exchange mediated by Christian musicking. The chapter addresses modes of musical imposition, exchange, and transformation in Western missions and colonial projects; cultural boundary openings and closings as managed musically by utopian Christian communities; Christian musics as tools for constructing and challenging “musical spaces”; Christian music within transnational flows of global capitalism; and the ways Christianity is part of musical experience in places where it is a seemingly ever-present dimension of everyday life.