E thnomusicology may or may not be, as Mantle Hood's "wag" allegedly observed, "what ethnomusicologists do," but it cannot be "done" without them. The aim of this essay is to examine the concept of the ethnomusicologist implied in certain theories of research method, to investigate the theoretical implications of alternative concepts, and to propose a research model which allows for Blum's contention that "any ethnomusicologist, like any of his informants, has lived through a specific 'learning process'," during which he is subject to "particular social constraints" (1975:208-9) which lead to adoption of one course of action, one set of interests, or one theory in preference to another. My concern with research doubtless arises from the personal constraints of 11 years continuous experience in third-world countries, where the potential disappearance of traditional music induces a drive towards "preservation" and provides the opportunity for observation of musical activity impossible at a western university. Orientation inevitably moves from the "study of music as sound" to investigation of man as music-maker, while the opportunity to watch embryo ethnomusicologists in action increases awareness of both performers and scholars as human beings. This opportunity is, however, subject to "constraints of situation." In formulating his theoretical position, the transplanted scholar finds himself caught between an academic colonialism which endowed third-world university libraries with Kobb6's Complete Opera Book and Hegel's Aesthetics and an inverted post-independence anti-colonialism embodied in all (48) volumes of the works of Lenin. If the resulting environmental constraints have led to the incursion of philosophy into ethnomusicology, the end-product should be judged by its value as a contribution to ethnomusicological theory. Full investigation of the phenomenon of constraint implies the construction of a schema such as the following triad: