The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music

and Culture
Participant Observation

Contributors: David Racanelli

Edited by: Janet Sturman
Book Title: The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture
Chapter Title: "Participant Observation"
Pub. Date: 2019
Access Date: May 1, 2019
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks,
Print ISBN: 9781483317755
Online ISBN: 9781483317731
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483317731.n552
Print pages: 1668-1671
© 2019 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online
version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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Participant observation is a qualitative method of research that embraces learning to perform as an indis-
pensable research technique in ethnomusicology. This method involves varying degrees of observation, par-
ticipation, and musical competence in a variety of contrasting sociocultural contexts. During the 1950s, ma-
jor paradigmatic shifts occurred in anthropology and other social sciences. Participant observation was em-
braced as a means though which a researcher could interact with informants at major life events, including
ritualized rites of passage, and more daily practices. Using this method, researchers could collect invaluable
data concerning the lives, feelings, and experiences of informants. Emerging as a comparable development
in ethnomusicology, ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood introduced the concept of bimusicality in 1960. Assum-
ing that one possesses proficiency in a first musical tradition, hands-on fluency is crucial for understanding
a second (foreign) musical tradition. Bimusicality was conceived as ethnomusicology’s practical dimension,
which has been set in relief to more theory-oriented approaches in the field, including performance theory,
cognitive studies, and phenomenology. While initially some scholars viewed participant observation to be too
subjective, it has become widely accepted as a means of acquiring significant insights in different geographic
and ethnolinguistic contexts for nearly a century. This entry discusses the qualitative approach of participant
observation in the context of musical performance as well as the results made possible by its techniques.

Historical Use of Participation-Observation in Ethnomusi-

cology
Beginning in the 1930s, missionary and ethnomusicologist A. M. Jones embraced a hands-on, practical ap-
proach to studying African music. He maintained that in order to understand the apparent complexities of
African rhythm, one must join an African band and learn to take one’s part. His observations foreshadowed
Gerhard Kubik’s later conclusion that through participant observation as a means of direct personal contact,
non-Africans can learn to understand African music. Carrying on the tradition of participant observation in
African music studies, John Blacking began his fieldwork by learning to sing Venda children’s songs in South
Africa during the 1960s, emulating the Venda ways of learning. After learning the Venda children’s song reper-
toire, Blacking participated as a drummer in Venda possession trance sessions. He performed the tshikona,
the national dance of the Venda, later concluding that “by joining the dance, I was able to . . . generate indi-
viduality in community, and so combine self with others in a way that is fundamental to the existence of Venda
culture and society.” By acquiring musical proficiencies in song, instrumental playing, and dance, Blacking
was able to examine the deeper sociomusical structures that underlie the Venda musical system as a whole,
linking the different performance idioms to one another within a single, integrated conceptual framework. Writ-
ing to Afghan music specialist John Baily, Blacking encouraged Baily’s nascent interest in ethnomusicology,
explaining to him that learning to perform and play music is a basic field research technique. Blacking em-
phasized the significance of learning from as many different musicians as possible in variety of contexts and
settings.

During his fieldwork trips during the mid- to late 1970s, Baily learned to play the Afghan dutār and rebāb, two
lutes of varying size and number of strings. While in Terat during 1973, Baily enlisted the services of a hered-
itary professional musician who taught him some of the rudimentary phrases and patterns in the dutār reper-
toire, recording his lessons on cassette and classifying them as pedagogical materials. Baily also learned to
play the rebab from one of the country’s most well-respected musicians. He noticed a significant difference
between the teaching styles and approaches of an amateur and a hereditary professional musician. Through
recording, transcribing, and practical application, Baily acquired an acceptable degree of musical proficiency
on the Afghan rebāb. His teacher (Amir Jan) encouraged him to abstract the underlying musical models that
provided the basis of improvised performances. From these experiences, Baily conceived the extent to which
participant observation is a useful research technique.

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Standard Practices and Participant Observation

The acquisition of performance skills facilitates analysis and the study of music, which supports the theory
that music making is an integral part of data collection for ethnomusicologists. For a musician and researcher,
it consists of learning the fundamental musical concepts from which models can be abstracted, elaborated,
and recycled. The researcher as performer apprehends musical structure operationally, leading to hands-
on knowledge of a musical style and contrasting idioms within performance genres. As a composer, the re-
searcher learns to generate variations and new musical material, which the researcher can employ in recipro-
cating relationships with research subjects or informants. As dialectical ethnomusicology, this approach has
yielded great results in a number of contrasting sociocultural contexts.

Teaching techniques, methods of learning, and institutional training can vary greatly within a music culture,
leading to different modes of acquisition. In the Middle East, for example, amateur and (hereditary) profes-
sional training are very different from one another, as the fieldwork of Baily and others have shown. For Baily,
his two teachers represented two ways of learning to perform, which were determined by the initial presence
or absence of a teacher and knowledge of a notional system (sargam). Each teacher had acquired either rep-
resentational or operational knowledge of music theory that depended upon their own method of acquisition,
intuitive or analytical. The way one learns (i.e., by ear or by notation) impacts the manner in which one teach-
es. These differences in training can point to distinctions concerning the social integration of musicians within
a context or society.

For a researcher, learning to perform has several social advantages. As a performer and musical collaborator,
ethnomusicologist can easily define their role within the host community or context. Also, in many instances,
performance ability acts as an invitation to be involved in the daily lives of research subjects, who invariably
befriend researchers after years of collaboration. Baily and others gained intimate access to a social world
that otherwise would be inaccessible to an outsider. Participant observation at rites of passage such as wed-
ding celebrations contribute to an understanding and deeper knowledge of musicians, their music, and the
contexts in which they live and work. Such acts of participant observation are practiced widely in the social
sciences.

In addition, one learns the dangers of becoming too close to one’s informants. It becomes imperative to con-
tinually negotiate the terms and nature of one’s involvement with informants. A researcher must always con-
sider the extent to which the researcher’s relationships with subjects might potentially detract from maintain-
ing an objective view. In the publication Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomu-
sicology, authors Michelle Kisliuk, Nicole Beaudry, Carol Babiracki, and Greg Barz examine the impact of
interpersonal relationships with informants upon the quality of scholarly research. These considerations char-
acterize participant observation as a qualitative research method in general, creating both challenges and
opportunities for further discovery.

In discussing the relationship between musical performance and fieldwork, Stephen Feld, who learned to sing,
drum, and compose while researching the Kaluli in Papua New Guinea, observed that participant observation
brought him closer to the Kaluli and their views concerning the inner workings of their music. For Anthony
Seeger and his wife, participation observation among the Suyá in the Amazon was part of an ongoing process
of cultural exchange and indigenization. Musical instruments, such as the guitar and banjo, became research
tools that bridged the Seegers to their informants. The shared experience of music making transcended some
differences of race and ethnicity. These experiences, however, are far from atypical and are not limited to any
particular locale. Participation observation has served as a common denominator in a number of significant
ethnomusicological studies.

Anthropologist and musician Pamela Myers-Moro researched Thai music in Bangkok, noting that her music
lessons on several different instruments helped her build significant relationships within her host milieu. Her
participant observations provided valuable insights concerning the kinds of questions to ask during interviews
and casual conversations with her informants. Conversely, knowing the kinds of inquiries that one should
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avoid can be equally revealing to an ethnomusicologist. Widening the net in the field of participant observa-
tion, Tang Sooi Beng’s work in Malaysia includes recorded performances of musicians with whom she did not
have direct personal contact. Her transcriptions and analyses of these recordings provided a point of compar-
ison for her firsthand participant observations of her research subjects. Placing pedagogy and participation-
observation at the heart of her research in Bangkok, Deborah Wong was allowed, and on certain occasions
ordered, to participate in the rituals that she was studying, accepting traditional models on their own terms.

Significant discoveries concerning participant observation as a research method have been made in Java and
Bali. Drawing heavily upon his experience as a student, performer, and teacher, Benjamin Brinner employed
participant observation as a means of studying competence and interaction in the Javanese gamelan (a tra-
ditional ensemble of metallophones and other percussion instruments). Concerning bimusicality he conclud-
ed, “the most direct access to different ways of thinking and making music is gained by making an intense,
long term effort to absorb those ways of music from within, attempting to get inside other peoples’ heads and
fingers.” Reflecting upon his years of experience playing Balinese gamelan music, Michael Bakan placed a
high priority on establishing a place of belonging for himself within the network of musicians that he worked.
Like Meyers-Moro who worked in mainland Southeast Asia (Thailand), his experiences directly informed and
shaped the questions that he asked and addressed as a scholar. Invariably, participation observation as bimu-
sicality and other methods of research are mutually reinforcing. Learning to play different musical instruments,
for example, should be valued based upon the extent to which it facilitates scholarship and allows meaningful
connections to occur with informants and their music.

Drawing upon his experiences in three vastly different musical contexts (Peru, Zimbabwe, and the United
States), Thomas Turino examines the dynamics and politics of participatory music in his book Music as Social
Life. Maintaining that musical values, aesthetics, and practices vary greatly throughout the world, Turino out-
lines a series of models for addressing cultural difference in music. Ultimately, Turino aims to provide a series
of basic conceptual and ethnographic examples for thinking about music and individual subjectivities, which is
one of a participant observer’s greatest challenges. This concern for negotiating objectivity and subjectivity in
participant observation as a research technique echoes the concerns of anthropologist Alan Merriam during
the 1950s, bringing this historical overview nearly full circle.

Considerations for Future Research

Some would argue that participation-observation as a research method has been marginalized in ethnomu-
sicology, especially in comparison to the anthropology component of the field. The most significant contribu-
tions concerning participation observation in the future may aim to bridge practical dimensions of research to
the theoretical approaches. Cognition and communication theory, performance studies, and phenomenology,
for example, are areas that can benefit greatly from a more serious consideration of participation observation
as a research method.

Studies of cognition analyze the perceptual process using a wide range of approaches. Participant observa-
tion could address the collection and synthesis of data on its most fundamental level, offering insights into
listeners’ orientations and conceptual frameworks. For an ethnomusicologist, on the other hand, performance
theory points to a range of meanings, explaining oral performance by drawing on sociolinguistics, theatrical
performance, and/or musicology. It is assumed, for example, that performance enhances experience, bring-
ing a greater intensity of communication between performers and audiences. If so, participant observation
as learning to perform offers a practical means through which one can study and understand performance.
As performance relates to experience, phenomenology and experiential ethnomusicology have to stake in
the benefits of participation observation. Phenemonology is a framework that focuses upon studying human
experience with attention to the details of subjective interpretations. Since participant observation is a highly
qualitative method, it is an ideal means through which an ethnomusicologist could study the subjectivities of

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musical experiences. The bridging of phenomenology and participation observation, with its close connec-
tions to German comparative musicology, would allow for some historical perspective by recalling the incep-
tion of the discipline during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By aligning practical with theoretical dimen-
sions, participant observation may enrich scholarship in ethnomusicology.

See also Bimusicality; Fieldwork; Performance Practice; Performance Studies; Phenomenology

David Racanelli
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483317731.n552
10.4135/9781483317731.n552

Further Reading

Baily, J. (2001). Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology. British Journal of Ethno-
musicology, 10(2), 85–98. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09681220108567321
Bakan, M. (1999). Music of death and new creation: Experiences in the world of Balinese gamelan beleganjur.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Barz, T. E., & Cooley, T. J. (Eds.). (2008). Shadows in the field: New perspectives for fieldwork in ethnomusi-
cology (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Blacking, J. (1974). How musical is man? Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Brinner, B. (1995). Knowing music, making music: Javanese gamelan and the theory of musical competence
and interaction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Feld, S. (1990). Sound and sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics and song in Kaluli expression (
2nd ed.
). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Nettl, B. (2005). The study of ethnomusicology: Thirty-One issues and concepts (New ed.). Urbana: University
of Illinois Press.
Turino, T. (2008). Music as social life: The politics of participation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Witzleben, L. (2010). Performing in the shadows: Learning and making music as ethnomusicological practice
and theory. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 42, 135–166.

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