Mantle Hood

Mantle Hood (June 24, 1918 – July 31, 2005) was an American ethnomusicologist. Among other areas, he specialized in studying gamelan music from Indonesia. Hood pioneered, in the 1950s and 1960s, a new approach to the study of music, and the creation of the first American university program devoted to ethnomusicology, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was known for a suggestion, somewhat novel at the time, that his students actually learn to play the music they were studying.

Born and reared in Springfield, Illinois, Hood studied piano as a child and played clarinet and tenor saxophone in regional jazz clubs in his teens. Despite his talent as a musician, he had no plans to make it his profession. He moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s and wrote pulp fiction while employed as a draftsman in the aeronautical industry.

After Army service in Europe during World War II, he returned to Los Angeles. He enrolled in the School of Agriculture at the University of California before transferring to UCLA.

Between 1945 and 1950 Mantle Hood studied Western music under composer and composed several classical pieces. Hood earned both his BA in music and MA in composition from UCLA in 1951. As a Fulbright scholar, Hood studied Indonesian music under Jaap Kunst at the University of Amsterdam.

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