Critical Review #4

Titon, Jeff Todd. 2008. “Knowing Fieldwork.” In Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology edited by Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley, 25-41. New York: Oxford University Press.

In his article, Jeff Titon writes that fieldwork should focus on understanding a culture’s music through performance-participation rather than on explaining a culture’s music through data gathering. Titon makes the interesting observation that when asked to talk about their music, the “[subjects] often speak in terms of personal experience and understanding rather than offer systematic explanation” (36). By observing that cultures rank personal/communal experience over musical systems and by claiming that “musically is socially constructed cultural phenomenon” (30) rather than having a scientific distinction, Titon enforces his idea that music needs to be understood through the cultural relationships between the performers and through the unique experience of making music, which he elegantly describes as being a “radical form of suspension” (32) where there is “no longer any self awareness” (32).

I agree with Titon’s approach to understanding music by communally participating in or experiencing its creation; I think a lot of American pop music could not be fully “understood” simply by doing field research or analyzing harmonies; the community “vibe” of the rock musicians and listeners during the Summer of Love is just as if not more important than the structural analysis of songs those musicians wrote. So how can ethnomusicological writing and lectures change to accommodate observations? Should universities offer more music master classes where people can encounter the communal experience of making music? Should lectures about specific cultures’ music be supplemented with these classes?