A survey of the past, present and future of 'analysis' as a category in ethnomusicology. We study the analysis of music in early ethnomusicology as pure sound, the turn towards 'cultural analysis,' and the war between the 'musicological' and anthropological camps in the late-20th century history of the discipline; and we seek ways of overcoming the fallacious distinction between 'musical' and 'contextual' analysis. Most of all, we discover ways that analysis can be useful to the leading edges of ethnomusicological thought — the move towards sound studies, towards the 'everyday,' towards the post-human, and the inquiry into music beyond the auditory, to name a few.