Presentation Materials

Feedback Response

Ernesto’s response raises important questions. He asks what scholars should and can take from personal accounts of other cultures. It seems that every scholarly work, not just in the field of ethnography but also in history, sociology, etc., will be biased by the views of the author. Every scholar will view a subject differently, and so will write subjectively about it. Even in the sciences, researchers must analyze and interpret their findings—empirical data can show different scholars different things. Ethnographies that are written in a reflexive and subjective style, then, should be taken just as seriously as any scientific paper. Ethnographers should critically read each other’s works and learn about other possible perceptions of a culture, even if they do not align with their own analyses.

It is true that there is no clear answer to Ernesto’s questions about building personal ethnographies based on several other people’s personal experiences. This can be debated at length, and it seems unlikely that any group will come to a consensus, but since I believe it is up to the individual to decide, I will offer my opinion. It seems unfair to judge a culture or even create one’s own ethnography without actually experiencing that culture for oneself. Therefore, ethnographies are interesting to read and serve as an informative teaching tool in many ways, but one cannot truly understand them unless 1) they are about one’s own culture, or 2) one has also experience the culture about which the ethnographer has written.

Challenge Question Commentary

The concerns that Trevor raises about missing important facets of a culture by only giving a snapshot of one day are valid. He is right that one can only grasp a culture by being present in it for a long time, and so one can only represent it truthfully by painting an imagined picture of this culture; it seems that a scholar must have boundaries, however, and that these boundaries are unclear.

This leads me to wonder whether scholars can EVER write an effective ethnography—can any scholar truly understand another culture well enough to portray it on the page? Are scholars like Agawu (who, himself comes from the culture he describes) the only ones with valid opinions and thoughts? Can any outsider ever write an ethical ethnography?

Trevor acknowledges that scholars must be transparent in their work, and I agree that this is a very important in writing an ethnography; there is still a danger, though, that even the most transparent of scholars will fictionalize and generalize aspects of a culture with which the actors of the culture might not agree. Even with the reflexive work that ethnomusicologists have been doing in recent years, it remains impossible, in my opinion, to capture an unbiased and objective picture of any culture.

It seems, then, that all ethnographies are fictional. Each describes a culture as one person (the author) saw it at the moment of the book’s writing. These can be valuable sources, but even with the transparency and all-encompassing work that Trevor suggests, I do not believe that an ethnography can be separated from the ethnographer.

Critical Review #10

In her article “Dancing with the Enemy,” Pacini Hernandez outlines a history of Afro-Cuban music and describes its emergence on the world scene. Because of the country’s history, she talks quite a bit about politics and the 1959 revolution. She makes interesting points about the “value of authenticity in the world music landscape;” the idea the Cuba inadvertently supported all musical traditions, even those that it might have felt badly about supporting; and marketing. She then describes the difficulties that Cuban musicians have faced in exporting their music, not because of their musical training (which she says was fantastic), but because of their lack of experience with capitalism. She closes her article with questions about the future of Cuban music. It seems that with a new president come new Cuba policies, so perhaps she will soon see some answers.

Pacini Hernandez mentioned that some Cubans were exasperated by Afro-Cuban music “hogging the spotlight” in the US. Does this happen with other music cultures? Is there one type of music that represents Africa to us, for example?

Critical Review #9

Questions for Kiri:
When the Chicago Sacred Harp singers talk about being "founders" of a new tradition, how do they say this word? Do they believe themselves creators of something entirely new, or is there some sort of reverence for the past, as in much of the Sacred Harp singing community?

Is it viewed as more prestigious to be able to lead a song without the book? Is this reserved for older members of the community? Have you ever led a song without the book?

Question for the class:
Kiri talks a bit about the Sacred Harp book and the Bible. We discussed this a bit in our last class. How can it be made clear to singers that the Sacred Harp is NOT a sacred text? In our listserv reading, it sounded like some singers consider it to be the law. What other areas of society and culture have arguments about this type of codification?

Challenge Question Response

Ethnographies have changed a great deal over time, and the “new fieldwork” discussed by so many authors has led to a great deal of reflexivity in ethnographic works. Scholars place themselves at the center of their work, building stories about their research and making observations about themselves, in addition to the culture they are experiencing. Other scholars may wonder, then, how reflexive a work can become without becoming useless in the field of study; they question where the boundary between the personal narrative and the scientific text should be. Reflexivity in writing ethnography is of utmost importance—by including oneself in the portrait of another, scholars show the reader their magnifying glass.

The painter Diego Velazquez painted himself into the famous portrait of several Royal Maidens, Las Meninas, in 1656. This reflexivity is one of the things students study today about his work; he shows the viewer of the canvas his perspective. Ethnographers practice (and should practice) the same technique by demonstrating their own backgrounds and histories to the reader so that he can better understand the observations.
This “stepping backwards” began to occur only in the last 50 years in the field of Ethnomusicology, and some authors are strong advocates of it. Jeff Titon, for example, suggests that researchers should focus on the experiential aspect of their studies when they write ethnographies so that the reader can identify with the situation. He places himself, thus, at the epicenter of a music-culture and tries to explain from within. Similarly, Deborah Wong writes about her own feelings and experiences, hoping to convey these messages through a performative ethnography to the reader.

Both of these authors strongly believe that ethnography cannot be written objectively by a researcher in safari gear with a voice recorder, who has come to the Field to find himself. They do not subscribe to the idea that a culture is a fixed text that can be set down to be read in the same way forevermore. It is impossible to take a snapshot of a music-culture by writing an ethnography; the snapshot would look the same to everyone. A culture is something with which one must come into contact and experience for oneself in order to understand. It is, therefore, the way a person interacts with a culture that will help him understand it. The reflexive paradigm in Ethnomusicology comes out of a belief that by showing how one person has interacted with the culture, another person may be inspired to better understand it or even experience it for himself.

This does not mean that the new, reflexive ethnographies can be used to generalize. It is still impossible to make any accurate generalizations about a culture—every person who encounters it will find different truths and will focus on different aspects, and most will make viable observations. By being reflexive, the authors give themselves a sort of cushion, which, in a way, grants them permission to make subjective observations. After all, the book is just one person’s thoughts about a culture, right?