Fieldwork

Fieldwork in music research refers to the interactive qualitative process of collecting and studying both musical data and experiences within their context of existence. This procedure illustrates an outdoor practice (valid by the late 19th century) in social and behavioral sciences that is opposed to the “armchair” approach, in which a scientist formally analyzes phenomena through laboratory examination or bibliographic study. Fieldwork is a research methodology that derives from the anthropological concept of “ethnography” and is mainly applied in ethnomusicology and anthropology/sociology of music. It is particularly associated with the cultural study of music engaged within its physical environment as well as with the process of entering, sharing, observing, documenting, analyzing, interpreting, and reflexing upon specific musical practices in order to produce ethnographic knowledge. As an empirical course of action, fieldwork methodology is also frequently used in systematic musicology, music therapy, and music psychology, as well as in music education research.

Everyday sociocultural settings are multifaceted, emerging and ambiguous; therefore, defining the term the field is not always a commonly shared procedure. As music plays a fundamental role in constructing various performative milieus, “musical field” is generally identified as a venue where music culture is being experienced, expressed, and communicated among individuals, groups, and other social actors and agents. The fieldwork researcher who conducts his study within this site of musical interactions is not an unbiased observer but a mediator, an interlocutor trying to feel, understand, and convey lived musical practices, conceptions, relations, and representations. Therefore, “doing fieldwork” in music is a multifaceted means of getting involved basically with people making, experiencing, and recounting music in order to obtain a deeper, inside understanding of a specific music culture. There are many professionals who consider “doing fieldwork” as implicating both art and science expertise, especially when this has to do with field research in music. This is also a reason for which undertaking in-depth fieldwork in music is a day-to-day encountering that requires advanced skills and talents.

Historically speaking, fieldwork was initially applied as a pattern of inquiring distant and unfamiliar music cultures. This approach often implied the culture shock effect, a bodily and mental anxiety that is connected with the immersion of the fieldworker in “exotic” sociocultural settings. It was only later that scholars in social and behavioral studies noticed it would be more productive if they originated their field research into their own communities at first. There is another crucial distinction that is related to all the above methodological issues and is regularly employed during fieldwork—the “emic” versus the “etic” perspective. The emic mode of fieldwork pertains to capture and reveals the native-oriented [Page 468]point of view, while the etic one considers the scientist-oriented perception and analysis. Present theoretical reviews have reconsidered the “emic/etic” dilemma as being comprised of two complementary and not oppositional paths of the interpretation of music, since fieldwork involves the subjectivity of both the researcher and the local participants.

Fieldwork usually requires three consecutive phases of implementation: (1) preparing to enter the field, (2) being in and experiencing the field, and (3) analyzing, reflecting on, and writing about the field. Preparatory actions before going into the field may consist of acquiring the necessary skills, raising the requested funds, collecting and reviewing essential background information, arranging supplies and technical equipment, and sketching a preliminary agenda for the oncoming field investigation. Obtaining access to the field is probably the most challenging stage during the whole fieldwork process. That is why gaining entry to the field is commonly acknowledged as a liminal state of the research, a “personal sacrifice” or “rite of passage” for the scientist. Accordingly, fieldwork should not be considered as a fixed but as a flexible and emergent practice to be learned all the way through its application, and one should take into account the symbolic codes of ethics, values, morals, and worldviews of the people been studied.

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