How can the relationship between ethnomusicology and folk music studies be characterized? Which role does the cultural and/or geographical distance of the researcher play vis-à-vis her or his object of study? Three settings are discussed in this respect. While a certain cultural and geographic distance was considered to be common practice in earlier times which implied carrying out field research "elsewhere", i. e., not in your home country, increasingly during the last decades of the 20th century music at one's "doorstep"as well as urban music have become objects of study. ln this context the issue of investigating "one's own"music, which one is acquainted with, is especially relevant. From an ethnomusicological perspective it is of eminent importance in all these cases to explicitly refer to the general discourse in ethnomusicology concerning methodology, theories, and research questions. Very often developments in neighboring disciplines influence debates in ethnomusicology and thus will also have to be taken into account.