Twelve submissions were received for consideration for the biennial BFE Early Career Prize, published between 16 December 2021 and 31 December 2023 and which met the requirements of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s definition of an early career researcher. The committee tasked with reviewing the submissions consisted of Keith Howard (SOAS University of London), Laudan Nooshin (City, University of London), and Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta (University of Birmingham). The committee found all twelve papers engaging, although they covered diverse subjects and issues within the broad field of ethnomusicology, and they often took cross-disciplinary approaches. Some submissions tackled relatively familiar topics, some were highly theoretical, some were based on extensive ethnography, some reported on projects that have taken many years to develop and explore, and some introduced new directions. Taken together, the submissions indicate healthy development within ethnomusicology. However, with so many excellent up-and-coming scholars, we were faced with the inevitable challenge to determine a single contribution for the prize. After considerable deliberation, the BFE Early Career Prize, 2024, is awarded to:

Jacob Olley, “Evliya’s Song: Listening to the Early Modern Ottoman Court,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 76/3 (2023): 645–703.

The committee unanimously agreed that Olley’s extensive, expansive, and extremely detailed analysis of an early-modern Ottoman source – the 10-volume, seventeenth-century account by Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme – was well-written, engaging, and a pleasure to read. At the outset of his article, Olley cites Clifford Geertz’s observation that ethnography is like reading a manuscript, and cleverly and compellingly utilizes this idea to develop an ethnomusicological approach for engaging with historical materials. His article ranges broadly. It is richly illustrated with sixteenth- to eighteenth-century depictions of music at court, and it considers a wide range of literature, engaging with topical issues within the broader field of ethnomusicology that include colonialism, encounters, and “boon companionship.”

The committee would like to make an Honorable Mention to:

Ian R. Copeland, “Pop goes the postcolony: Britain remixes Hugh Tracey’s Malawi,” Ethnomusicology Forum 31/2 (2022): 190–211.

The committee felt that Copeland’s article offered a compelling and nuanced take on the legacy of Hugh Tracey’s recordings of southern African music. Although many of the themes tackled by the article have been discussed before, Copeland focuses in on aspects that, in his own words, have “largely eluded a non-academic listenership.” Copeland explores how ethnomusicological custodians of recordings have engaged with contemporary musicians and problematises the extractivism of a British remix album that focuses on sound rather than context but which is intended to be culturally aware. Using fieldwork data and interview materials, the author questions the charitable component of the album and the musical impacts it has had within Malawi. And, at a broader level, he argues for a critical approach to “musically tinged humanitarian projects.”