Field Methods in Ethnomusicology (Fall 2017)

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Overview

This course centers on ethnographic fieldwork, as applied to the study of society and culture, with a focus on sound and music.

While this Department of Music course is geared especially for ethnomusicologists, its broad coverage of theoretical and ethical issues, fieldwork techniques, inclusion of multimedia technology, and a pedagogy of learning-by-doing (from proposal writing, to fieldnotes, to shooting video) will prove useful to students in a wide variety of social science disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, education, and political science.

Ethnomusicology is "the meaningful social practice of studying music as a meaningful social practice" (Frishkopf 2011). Within music studies, ethnomusicology's distinguishing practical feature is fieldwork, a principal component of the ethnographic enterprise upon which most ethnomusicological (and anthropological) research is based. This course aims to provide you with strategies for the aquisition of field methods (procedural, declarative, and critical knowledge) enabling you to perform critical ethnographic fieldwork, to gather ethnomusicological data, and develop ethnographies.

For the first few weeks, we take up theoretical and critical overviews of fieldwork and ethnography including – most importantly – issues of truth, power, and ethics. Subsequently, we begin to focus on acquisition of perspectives, knowledge, and methods—technical and social—pertinent to critical ethnomusicological data collection via participant observation, interviewing, field notes, audio and video recording, and still photography. Here the course shifts gears, from reading about fieldwork to actually doing it. You will learn to transcribe and edit field materials, and to analyze and code fieldwork data in preparation for ethnographic writing. We will discuss techniques and strategies for molding multimedia materials into presentable formats, including documentary film, and development of multimedia websites, blogs, wikis, and podcasts.

You will also learn to develop effective ethnographic research proposals centered on fieldwork (including preparation of budgets and timelines), suitable for funding and guiding your research project. Most students should consider this course as an initial step towards their MA or PhD thesis.

Ethnomusicology is a diverse set of practices, and complete training in all field methods is not possible in the span of 13 sessions. In particular, we will not be able to study all technical subjects (audio recording/editing, photography, video recording/editing) in depth. Mastery of any one of these subjects requires an enormous investment in study and practice. Rather the focus here is on a broad spectrum of introductions—methods for acquiring methods, learning how to learn—in the hopes that you will thereby be enabled and motivated to explore further on your own.

Course outline

Click here for detailed course outline, including assignments

Science and technology underlying fieldwork recording

Physical concepts & demonstrations

Audio recording in theory

Making an audio recording

Light, vision, and photography

Equipment and tools for recording, editing, and analysis

Fieldwork hardware

Fieldwork equipment suggestions (tentative) (OLD)

Multimedia editing and analysis software

Readings and reserve

reserve Click here to locate Library reserve list.

Click here for scanned online readings

Assigned readings for weeks 2-4

Please sign up for readings to present in class by clicking on the links, and editing as instructed.

Commentaries on the readings

Click on the above link to bring up a list of course readings. Click on a reading title to discuss the reading with your colleagues, adding your own summary, critique, and commentary.

Final project websites

Here are some sample websites prepared by students who've taken this course in the past:

Janine