Introduction

In this chapter, co-editors León F. García Corona and Kathleen Wiens introduce and highlight the challenges, opportunities, and often overlooked importance of public-facing work in ethnomusicology. They articulate some of the crucial perspectives it can provide to the field of ethnomusicology. They show how and why public-facing work has been perceived, by academic culture, as “secondary” or “peripheral” to academic aims. They advocate for the importance and relevance of ethnomusicology in our society at large and shed light into the blind spots of current academic ethnomusicology programs.