Ethnomusicology is the study of music in human social and cultural life. Closely related today to the discipline of anthropology, its basic method is ethnographic fieldwork. This chapter begins by presenting a history of the field of ethnomusicology, from its earliest beginnings (as comparative musicology) in late nineteenth-century Europe to its present standing as a major music discipline worldwide. The chapter proceeds by providing a critical analysis of current debates, theoretical directions, new practices, and challenges, before concluding with an examination of some important issues affecting the future of ethnomusicology. These include the effects of postmodernism (such as the development of new paradigms foregrounding fragmentation and multiple subjectivities) on the study of music; the rise of various technologies as harbingers of a new formulation of music as simply one category of sound; the effects of globalism on diasporic studies, conceptions of “musical flow,” and the ethics of fieldwork; and, finally, the roles of sameness and difference as organizing principles of ethnomusicological analysis and practice