David Park McAllester (6 August 1916 – 30 April 2006) was an American ethnomusicologist and Professor of Anthropology and Music at Wesleyan University, where he taught from 1947–1986.
He briefly taught introductory anthropology at Brooklyn College before accepting a teaching position at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1947, while still working on his degree.
The idea of founding an academic ethmomusicological society had first come about when its creation was informally agreed upon by David McAllester, Willard Rhodes, and Alan Merriam in November 1953 at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia.
[11] As a result, in 1955, along with the support of Charles Seeger, Alan Merriam, Willard Rhodes, and honorary president Frances Densmore,[12] the Society for Ethnomusicology was cofounded by McAllester.
For example, in Navaho, McAllester found out that "there was no general word for 'musical instrument' or even for 'music,'" something that could not be possible just from sound recordings but could be discerned via a hands-on culturally immersive fieldwork approach.
Although McAllester does not believe in universals on grounds of "human variability and complexity", he claims that there are near-universals that are near enough for purposes of studying ethnomusicology and the musics of different populations, as axioms.
Another major debate in ethnomusicology is regarding if ethnomusicologists should be equally as disciplined in anthropology and musicology, whether they should give weight to one or the other, or be specialized in certain subfields of these sciences.
McAllester, while talking about Navajo music, says:"Melodic line and phrasing, meter, pitch, and scale have been reserved for highly trained musicologists, few of whom have been interested in cultural applications.