Ethnomusicology

Ethics in Ethnography

An ethnography is the work product of the ethnomusicologist. It is both the observation and the description of a culture (Cooley 1997, 4). It is the vehicle that the ethnomusicologist employs to tell others about another’s music tradition. For the ethnomusicologist, the field is where music culture is observed, experienced, and learned. Fieldwork is the effort through methods and practices employed to obtain the data that is used in the ethnography.

So here I am, a brand new ethnomusicologist – a neophyte - standing at the precipice of a budding life as an ethnographer. I have read all the books that I think I needed to get me started and have packed them in my backpack for reference. I have all the tools I think I need to be successful on my journey. Pens? Check. Blank journals? Check. Digital recorder, video-recorder, and tablet set up to capture and edit the moments witnessed? Check, check and check. I even have my informant – that special interlocutor that has agreed to ensure I have access to people and to provide the contextual interpretation I will undoubtedly need.

But wait a minute! What exactly am I going to do? And how exactly am I going to do it? What approach should I take? How do I view the musicians that I hope to describe? Standing in the field – so to speak – does not make me an ethnographer any more than standing in a garage makes me a car. The frustration is overwhelming, so I take a minute to compose myself by sitting down on the ground and looking out over the field. I need help!

I can’t approach this with a pre-nineteenth century colonilizing mindset, looking at the musical traditions of the “Other” with bias. I will definitely need an attitude adjustment. So, as I sit on this grassy knoll, up walks Dr. Kwame Appiah who teaches philosophy at Princeton. He suggests I take a cosmopolitan world-view. I should “start with what is human in humanity” (Appiah 2006, 134), believing we, not only have obligations to each other, but we also “take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives”. See the value in the music that is created, it allows you to see outside of the constraints of a relativist who agrees to disagree. It opens you up to understand what has been performed (13-31). He reminds me that as I observe and write that I don’t forget that I should acknowledge that the people that produce the music will believe that the music is theirs and see the significance in the music they make just as I see it in my own music (xv). My writing should reflect that “their” music matters to me.

As I reflect on Dr. Appiah’s words, the leaves rustle behind me and when I turn I see Dr. Michelle Kisliuk, Associate Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Virginia. After overhearing the tail end of the conversation, she adds that there needs to be a blurring of the boundary between my life’s story and the life story of the “Other” (Kisliuk 1997, 23). The whole process of writing the ethnography of the field research helps to form one’s identity in the particular place and time of the musical tradition being studied (29). She adds that as I start to write, it will be like ‘telling a story to friends, only more difficult” because you will try to craft “theoretical and aesthetic themes” into your ethnography, making it thorough enough to “convey in detail the social and technical aesthetics of a group” and to capture the “meaning of a performed moment” (32-33). The use of metaphor in the ethnography helps to translate from the performers’ domain to the readers’ domain.

Dr. Appiah listens intently and turns to Dr. Kisliuk and asks, “Doesn’t blurring the lines between cultural music domains produce the same effect as globalization? Doesn’t this lead to the destruction of the homogeneity of the musical tradition being studied? This little bit of contamination that you bring into the mix is what sparks change in musical traditions. Now this is not a bad thing – it is inevitable. But it makes studying a culture in its pure form more complicated, because your very presence changes everything. Even your own musical tradition will change as a result” (Appiah, 101-113).

I hear a voice say, “That is exactly what I’m saying.” Which makes us all turn to the left. It turns out to be Dr. Kay Kaufman-Shelemay, Professor of Music at Harvard University, walking toward us. She goes on to say that performing with the “Other” allows for the transmission of their musical expression to the ethnomusicologist and enhances the ethnography beyond what merely observing would allow. The ethnographer becomes a part of the tradition. The ethical dilemma is that participation in the tradition changes the very tradition you are trying to preserve in your writing (Shelemay 1997). She tells me that while the role of the ethnographer is inherently intrusive, keep in mind that fieldwork is “a problem of human relations” where you navigate through a steady stream of individuals of which each relationship has to be negotiated in order to extract an authentic narrative.

Dr. Appiah nods. He then interjects that part of the difficulties of interacting with that steady stream of people lies in the limitation of language. We do not have the same vocabulary. The very language we use, while interacting or even to evaluate, can cause problems when trying to communicate to one group about the other. So the dilemma here is what vocabulary do you use in your ethnography to communicate the music tradition effectively? Do you use the vocabulary of the “Other” and let the reader translate, or do you use the vocabulary of the reader leaving the responsibility for translating to you? (Appiah, 57-60).

With that advice, I think I’m ready. I see the performers I planned to work with just up ahead of me. As I walk a little closer to the performers, I notice the men are playing the instruments and the women are dancing. I am not sure of the significance, but they sit in separate areas of the room. There is no audience, per se; everybody is participating in some way – maintaining the intricate beat, swaying to the music, or singing along with the singer, who happens to be female. I wonder out loud as to how I will approach the group, especially the males. I am cognizant of the gender roles. I did not consider how my very presence can introduce conflict with social norms. The frustration on my face must have been apparent to Dr. Carol Babiracki, the Associate Professor of Music History and Culture at Syracuse University, who quickly approaches me.

Am I going to just observe and record the events that unfold before me? Or will I participate? Will my participation create conflict among the individuals in the music culture? Yet another ethical dilemma that needs to be resolved. Can the researcher be truly gender neutral, Dr. Babiracki? She tells me that I will need to be flexible in every situation. My gender may make a difference as to whether I gain access to some aspect of the music tradition. Perhaps my interlocutor can help. Perhaps I will not get the interaction for which I had hoped (Babiracki 1997).

I’m startled by my cell phone’s ring. Looking at the caller ID, I immediately answer, “Hello Dr. Timothy Rice! Let me put you on speaker. There are so many people here that would love to hear what you have to say about me stating as an ethnomusicologist.”

He tells us, just what he tells his students at UCLA where he is a professor of Ethnomusicology: You will become an ethnomusicologist “sometime during or after fieldwork.” It’s a transformation that occurs as you understand another’s culture or even your own. The field is the place where your theoretical methods are applied and where it is confirmed that “music is a part of culture” (Rice 1997, 107). You will start in the position of the etic (outsider looking in) and as you work with the people and they get to work with you, as you learn the language (or lingo), as you play more within the culture you will transition to a middle ground that is neither etic or emic (from the inside looking out) (110).

Everyone nods in agreement as they start to walk away. Dr. Appiah turns and says to me that I should look for the similarities between the musical culture I am studying and my own. He says that “engagement with strangers is always going to be engagement with particular stranger” (98); once you get to know the new culture, it is no longer abstract or imaginary – it is real. In the end, “you make sense of each other” (99) and that is where the understanding gets to a level where you can truly write about the musical culture in a way that allows the “Other” to be understood.

I jump up from what must have been a dream because I am suddenly alone, but surrounded by enough knowledge that I have a renewed sense of the approach I will take. I head towards the music, but realize I should bring my instrument. Running quickly to my car I get my clarinet and get to the group just as introductions begin. I tell them, I am Cheryl and I am an ethnomusicologist!

Works Cited

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Babiracki, Carol M. 1997. "What's the Difference? Reflections on Gender and Research in Village India." In Shadows in the Field, edited by Gregory F Barz and Timothy J Cooley, 121-136. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cooley, Timothy J. 1997. "Casting Shadows in the Field; An Introduction." In Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, edited by Gregory F Barz and Timothy J Cooley, 3-19. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Kisliuk, Michelle. 1997. "(Un)doing Fieldwork: Sharing Songs, Sharing Lives." In Shadows in the Field; New Perspectives in Ethnomusicology, edited by Gregory F Barz and Timothy J Cooley, 23-44. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Rice, Timothy. 1997. "Toward a Mediation of Field Methods and Field Experience in Ethnomusicology." In Shadows in the Field; New Perspectives in Ethnomusicology, edited by Gregory F Barz and Timothy J Cooley, 101-120. New York: Oxford University Proess.

Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. 1997. "THe Ethnomusicologist, Ethnographic, Method, and the Transmission of Tradition." In Shadows in the Field; New Perspectives in Ethnomusicology, by Gregory F Barz and Timothy J Cooley, edited by Gregory F Barz and Timothy J Cooley, 189-204. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.