RMWA

Question 1

FOUR main things to do before beginning Ethnographic Research (CLAT Step 1)

Answer 1

1. Start a CAP (community arts profile)
2. Take a first glance at a COMMUNITY:
   
   1. Questions to ask:
      
      1. Where is the community and how many are there?
      2. What ties the community together?
      3. How do they communicate with each other and how often?
      4. How do they share artistic creations?
      5. How did they get there (history)?
3. Take a first glance at a community’s ARTS:
   
   1. Make a QUICK LIST of artistic genres
   2. Extend the list from the OUTSIDE-in: Look for important events and rituals marked by artistic communication)
   3. Extend the list from the INSIDE-out: Recognize communication acts by their special features:
      
      1. distinctive performance contexts
      2. they contract/expand density of info
      3. may require more/special knowledge in experiencers to fully understand
      4. special formal structure (performance features)
      5. elicit unusual responses (emotions)
      6. require unusual expertise
4. Start exploring a community’s social and conceptual life (8 anthro categories)

Question 2

INSIDE-out: Recognize communication acts by their special features

Answer 2

INSIDE-out: Recognize communication acts by their special features—

1. distinctive performance contexts
2. contract/expand density of info
3. may require more/special knowledge in experiencers to fully understand
4. special formal structure (performance features)
5. elicit unusual responses (emotions)
6. require unusual expertise

Question 3

Research Methods: 7 Types, 7 sources

Answer 3

1. Library research/searching the literature: (Spickard 2017)
2. Interviews:
   
   • (Jackson 1987): (1) Learn the community’s appropriate way of doing interviews and show genuine interest; (2) Use both directive (specific) and indirective (open-ended) questions; (3) Ask follow-up questions; (4) Allow informant to talk mostly; (5) Use props; (6) record responses; (7) Know your equipment; (8) Act natural
   • (Spradley 1979):“Asymmetrical turn-taking” = the informant talks more; types of ethnographic questions: descriptive, structural, contrast
   • (Spickard 2017): Three types of interviews: (1) Hermeneutic (collects reports of acts, behavior, or events at a deep level, and details about people’s deeply held opinions and attitudes); (2) Expert (collects views of people with special knowledge about a topic); and (3) Phenomenological (collect detailed accounts of people’s experiences).
3. Participant Observation:
   
   • (Myers 1992): experiencing the art form within the culture; build trust with the artists
   • (Schrag 2005a): vulnerability and trust are important elements to its success
   • Hood (1960): bimusicality
4. Surveys: (Spickard 2017) – see card below
5. Note-taking (Spradley 1980, Myers 1992)
6. Audio and Video Recording (Schrag 2013c)
7. Photography (Schrag 2013c)

Question 4

Spickard’s (2017) – Six Research Steps

Answer 4

(1) Develop a good research question
(2) Choose a logical structure (research method) for your research (10 structures)
(3) Identify data type (14 types)
(4) Pick data collection method (12 methods organized under observations, interviews, surveys, written reports/records)
(5) Pick a data collection site (who, where?)
(6) Pick a data analysis method (quantitative or qualitative)

Question 5

Jackson’s (1987) 3 phases of fieldwork

Answer 5

1) Plan research, 2) Collect data, 3) Analyze data

Question 6

Spickard (2017): four types of data to collect using surveys/questionnaires

Answer 6

(1) reports of acts/behaviors/events, (2) demographic/self-identity, (3) opinions and attitudes (shallow), (4) cultural knowledge

Question 7

Spickard’s (2017) three reminders about surveys

Answer 7

(1) surveys usually produce quantitative data; (2) survey data typically take one of three different forms (interval/ratio, ordinal, or categorical), and (3) there is a difference between a unit of observation and a unit of analysis.

Question 8

Myers’ (1992) Three Methods for Ethnographic Research

Answer 8

METHODS: (1) participant observation (complete participant, participant as observer, observer as participant, complete observer)–more you blend in, less “reactivity” in research. (2) interviews (informal/guided conversation; semi-structured/open-ended; highly structured)–let silence help you and the informant, don’t jump in! (3) written records: jottings & organized notes

Question 9

Myers’ (1992) definition of Participant Observation; and Myers (1992) and Schrag (2005) on doing Participant Observation (one each)

Answer 9

Participant observation is the experiencing of an art form within the culture. Build trust with the artists (Myers 1992), while vulnerability and trust are important elements to its success (Schrag 2005a).

Question 10

Eight suggestions from Jackson (1987) for conducting ethnographic interviews

Answer 10

(1) Learn the culture’s appropriate way of doing interviews and show genuine interest; (2) Use both directive (specific) and indirective (open-ended) questions; (3) Ask follow-up questions; (4) Allow informant to talk mostly; (5) Use props to prompt discussion; (6) Audio or video record responses; (7) Know your equipment; (8) Act natural

Question 11

Arts Ethnography definition (paraphrase) based on Seeger, in Myers (1992:104)

Answer 11

An Arts Ethnography is a written description based on observation and interaction with living people about how sounds, movements, dramatizations, and other forms of artistic communication are conceived, made, and appreciated, and how they influence (and are influenced by) other individuals, groups, and social and artistic processes.

Question 12

Bauman’s (1984:38): The emergent quality of performance resides in four factors

Answer 12

the interplay between 1) communicative resources (performance features & USS), 2) individual competence, 3) goals of the participants, and 4) the particular situational context

Question 13

Broader cultural context categories (12)

Answer 13

1. Artists
2. Creativity
3. Language
4. Transmission and Change
5. Cultural Dynamism
6. Identity and Power
7. Aesthetics and Evaluation
8. Time
9. Emotions
10. Subject Matter
11. Community Values
12. Community Investment

Question 14

Artists: Issues & Questions – 3 questions, 6 sources

Answer 14

Who are the artists in this community?

• CLAT (Schrag 2013c):
  
  1. Who are the artists related to this kind of event?
  2. What is required to be one of these artists? (status, gender, age, skill, training, etc.)
  3. How do artists in this genre relate to their community?
  4. How do people become artists in this genre?
     
     • How is the role of artist in this genre attained–ascribed or achieved?
• Small (1998): Who is an artist? An artist is anyone who is musicking; everyone can do musicking

Where can I find artists?

Stone (1979): At enactments of artistic genres, which are often bounded events “set off and made distinct from the natural world of everyday life by the participants.”

Bauman (1992): Performance = aesthetically marked, heightened mode of communication, framed as a special display for an audience.

How do artists relate to the local church and the wider community?

• (Fujimura 2017; Chenoweth 1984): Artists might be outside of the church
• (Merriam 1964; Schrag 2013c): How does the community view artists? High or low status, as drunks and deviants, or as community heroes? What meaning(s) do community members attach to each artistic role?

Question 15

Artists: Principles/Theoretical Background – 4 sources

Answer 15

1. (Schrag 2013): Get to know the community’s artists (CLAT Step 1 and Participant Organization lens)
2. Merriam (1964): Being classified as a valid artist is determined by the community
3. Fujimura (2017): Artists are often border walkers, mearcstapas, and don’t easily fit into the church; but can be great bridges between church and the outside world
4. Small (1998): Who is an artist? An artist is anyone who is musicking; everyone can do musicking

Question 16

Creativity: 2 Issues + 3 sub-sources

Answer 16

Issue: How does this community define creativity/ innovation?

• Schrag (2013c): Each culture values newness in unique ways.
  
  • “Never does someone create a new bit of artistic communication with no connection to something they’ve experienced before. Nothing comes from nothing.”

Issue: Globalization causes art forms worldwide to become less diverse (usually the minority cultures suffer the most loss)

Schrag:

• (2003): In the past, missionaries have told communities not to use their own arts → so we have the right & responsibility & privilege to help fix this damage
• (2015): Decreased artistic diversity in the world → We can help by encouraging local creativity
  *

Question 17

Creativity: 4 Questions from CLAT + 2 sub-sources

Answer 17

From Schrag (2013c):

1. Who are the creators of new works?
   
   • Who made each element of this event, and when? What did people do to make this?
2. How do new examples of this form come into being?
   
   • By deliberate effort, or through dreams/visions? By conscious creation or improvisation? Etc.
3. What does “new” mean in this art form?
   
   • As an artist creates a new work, ask them which aspects are different from previous creations, and which are the same.
   • Ask a group if they remember something jarring them because it was too new.
4. Where are the components of creativity (creators; language/symbolic systems; audience/ gatekeepers) located?
   
   • Rice (2003):
   • Clifford (1997): Emphasis should be on intercultural connections and routes (not roots) of creativity.

Question 18

Creativity: Principals/Theoretical Background – 7 sources & concepts

Answer 18

• (Dyrness 2001): God is creative, so we too can be creative for God’s glory
• [Best (2003): God as Continuous Outpourer; we are made in His image, created for continual outpouring, too, but He is singularly infinite, while humans are “unique and multiplied finitude”]
• (Schechner 2013): Creativity is part of performance
• (Schrag 2013):
  
  • Each community values & defines newness in different ways
  • Artistic creativity occurs “when one or more people draw on their personal competencies, symbolic systems, and social patterns of their community to produce an event of heightened communication that has not previously existed in its exact form.” (p.162)
• (Small 1998): Creativity in music is based largely in the relationships represented in the process of making music.
• (Csikszentmihalyi 1996): Creativity must start with an innovation by a person operating within a certain domain (a set of symbolic rules and procedures) that is then accepted by the field (the gatekeepers of the domain).
• Bauman (1984:38): The emergent quality of performance resides in the interplay between 1) communicative resources (performance features & USS), 2) individual competence, 3) goals of the participants, and 4) the particular situational context
• Toynbee (2003): The listener ultimately determines creativity–music is coded voices.

Question 19

Language: Questions – 3 CLAT questions + 1 cross reference

Answer 19

Schrag (2013c):

• What language(s), dialect(s), register(s) are APPROPRIATE for this form?
  
  • What language is USED in this object or performance? Is this normal speech or a special kind of language?
• What STATUS & IDENTITY are associated with each language choice? Why did the creator(s) use it?
  
  • [see also Dye (2009), esp. #1, appropriate language/dialect/orthography, and #2, good translation]

Question 20

Language: Principles/Theoretical Background – 1 source

Answer 20

(Schrag 2013c): The language(s) and verbal performance features used in an artistic event can reveal much about its relationship to its broader cultural context.

Question 21

Transmission & Chg: 2 CLAT Questions + 1 from another source

Answer 21

(Schrag 2013):

• How are competencies associated with the genre passed on to others?
  
  1. How did they learn to do what they did? (Ask if you can participate in or watch that process - take notes) How are people trained in this art form?
• How has this form changed historically? How and when did people use to learn it? Has that process changed and why?

Question 22

Transmission & Chg: Principles/Theoretical Background – 4 sources

Answer 22

• (Coulter 2011: 10): Overall, the GMSS focuses on musicking in the home community, rather than “popularity, prestige, public reception, or commercial recording,” because “revitalization must include actual use, with people playing around in that stylistic space.”
• [(Harris 2017): two key factors of preservational resilience for an epic tradition: effective transmission and necessary levels of innovation.]
• (Keil 1995): “Intense curiosity about where the groove comes from and wanting everyone to be able to get into a groove go together.” [Me: this curiosity and desire for grooving with others can help drive transmission]
• [Nettl (2005): Music often changes when society doesn’t change and vice versa; there are four kinds of musical change:
  
  • Complete change (one genre for another)
  • Radical change (one genre into another)
  • Acceptable variation/change (within a genre)
  • Unperceived variation/change (within a genre)

Question 23

Transmission & Chg: Research Methods – 1 method & source

Answer 23

Interview (Schrag 2013): Old & newer recordings– Watch/listen to them with a knowledgeable person: How do they differ? What might have caused differences?

Question 24

Cultural Dynamism: 3 CLAT Questions & 2 Issues from 3 Sources

Answer 24

Schrag 2013c:

• Which elements of a genre occur most regularly? (stable elements)
• Which elements of a genre occur with less predictability and are more loosely organized? (malleable elements)
• Any pairs of malleable & stable elements like rhythm, performance organization, or shape through time?

Issue: Genre vitality

• (Coulter 2011): Where does this genre fall on the GMSS (Graded Music Shift Scale)?
• (Harris 2017):
  
  • Where does this genre fall on my version of Schrag’s Graded Genre Health Assessment (GGHA)?
  • How can this genre be revitalized, or at least prevented from falling into further decline?

Issue: Is the genre currently in a state of change (malleability) or stability? Is the society currently in a state of change or stability?

• (Nettl 2005): There seems to be a need for musics to exhibit both change and stability; a music can either be focused on change or stability, but usually not both; music often changes when society doesn’t and vice versa.

Question 25

Cultural Dynamism: Principles/Theoretical Background – 2 sources, 1 def, 1 concept

Answer 25

Schrag (2013b, 2013c: 166): “Cultural dynamism happens when artists masterfully use the most malleable elements of their arts to invigorate the most stable. . . Without stable undergirdings, the creators in malleable forms will have no dependable reference points to anchor their creativity.”

Coulter (2011): Artistic genres, like languages, can be anywhere on a continuum from vitality, locked, or in decline

Question 26

Identity and Power: 2 CLAT Questions + 9 Identity & Power sources

Answer 26

Schrag (2013c):

• What kinds of people identify with this form? What are their identity markers (materials, languages, colors, instruments used)?
• How does this form relate to social stratification, gender, or other distinctions in cultures?

Identity:

Schrag (2003): In the past, missionaries have told communities not to use their own arts (cultural ethnic cleansing) → so we have the responsibility & privilege to help fix this damage

Alaghband-Zadeh (2015):

• Judith Butler’s concept of sonic performativity suggests that gendered musical performances produce & reinforce the illusion that there is an inner gender core.

Power:

Jules-Rosette (1985): Women in African Apostolic Church may not preach, but can interrupt a sermon with a critical song (“Men, stop beating your wives”) → artistic communication provides symbolic protection for critical content.

Abu-Lughod (1986): writes about the use of poetry in Bedouin society as a means of expressing culturally-unacceptable emotions in a culturally-acceptable way (Turner’s spontaneous communitas)

Shelemay (2001): Music can enforce or challenge power structures: hidden vs. public agendas (South African national anthem; reggae subversive resistance; Shoshone powwow flag/war songs)

Daughtry (2006): negative reaction in Russia to melodic associations of “old anthem tune,” even though words new and better suited]

Alaghband-Zadeh (2015):“Music’s performative nature leads to various types of gender policing in discourse on North Indian classical music. As Butler argues, ‘what is […] performed can only be understood by reference to what is barred from performance, what cannot or will not be performed’ (1997: 144).”

Stone (2019): In 1988 Lutherans in Liberia expressed negative political views against their dictator president during religious worship.

Robertson (1987): Gender power issues—

• Are attributes in music closely linked to gender? Where do male and female repertoires overlap, and for what reason?
• Are the performances of women and men given equal value? Are they critiqued in the same ways? By whom, and based on what criteria?
• Is dissent acted out through performance? By what means and with what effect?

Question 27

Identity and Power: Principles/Theoretical Background – 4 identity/solidarity concepts in 3 sources, 4 power concepts from 3 sources

Answer 27

Identity/solidarity–(Merriam 1964): Artistic action can create feelings of cohesion, solidarity.

Identity/solidarity–(Schechner 2013): Performance can be used to make/change identity; foster community & solidarity

Identity/solidarity–(Schrag 2013c):

• Every performed heritage dance step, song, story, proverb is an act of affirming (ethnic) identity.
• We use performance to construct a remembered or current ethnic identity.

Power–[Nettl (2005): ethnographies have not shown many societies with equal participation of men and women in musicking; perhaps this is because men have had more access to/attention paid more to them by male ethnographers? So with more women in the field, maybe we will learn more about the music of women.]

Power –(Schrag 2013c):

• Artistic communication can affirm power structures (e.g. national anthems) or safely oppose power (e.g. African American rap)
• Artistic action can provide a safe place for contestation or resolving conflict.

Power–(Shelemay 2001): Music is able to exhibit both public and hidden transcripts.

Question 28

Identity and Power: Research Methods

Answer 28

(Schrag 2013):

• Interview: Transcribe any texts associated with this event, like song lyrics or story content: Ask someone if there are any overt messages affirming or opposing a person, institution, or other entity.
• Participant Observation of the event: Did people communicate messages that challenged authority in the event that you haven’t seen them do elsewhere?

Question 29

Aesthetics & Evaluation: 3 CLAT questions + 1 add’l question/source

Answer 29

Schrag (2013c):

• Do people of different statuses/roles (ages, status, etc.) correct each other? How? Directly, indirectly, etc.
• Ask people what makes a characteristic of an art form good or bad.
• Ask people what was good or bad in a performance.

Merriam (1964): What is THIS culture’s philosophy of aesthetics? What do THEY view as beautiful in their arts?

Question 30

Aesthetics & Evaluation: 4 Principles/sources

Answer 30

Margolis (1965): aesthetics: the study of the criteria people use to judge an artifact’s perceived intrinsic attributes.

Merriam (1964): There are no formal characteristics of artistic communication that are intrinsically pleasing, beautiful, or good.

Small (1998): Beauty is created wherever the relationships communicated by the perceived object or gesture fit with the grid of ideal relationships in the mind of the perceiver.

Fitzgerald and Schrag (2006): A song or other bit of artistic communication is good insofar as its features work together to effect the purposes demanded by the context of its performance and experience

Question 31

Aesthetics & Evaluation: 1 Research Method from CLAT

Answer 31

[Participant Observation:] Observe art teachers/mentors teaching and note what advice or corrections they give. These may point to an ideal form.

Question 32

Time: Questions – CLAT: 3 main questions + 2 sub-sources

Answer 32

Schrag (2013c): Soon after an event, ask participants questions like these:

• How did you know when to do certain things? How did you experience time? (Was it linear, cyclical, or flowing in waves? Did it feel sacred?) When else do you experience time this way?
  
  • Goodridge (1999): movement rhythm in performance is… marked 1) in the body… [and] 2) by changes in the level of intensity, speed, and duration.”
  • Rice (2003): People experience music through time…
    
    • historically: 1) musical progression within a performance and 2) musical stylistic progression through different time periods)
    • experientially in the present (though affected by past life experiences).
• Ask a small group of people to list all of the times an event of this type occurred in the last two years. Do you notice any temporal patterns? Ask why they happened when they did.
• Ask experts in a genre whether the passage of time during the performance is connected to broader calendrical cycles.

Question 33

Time: Principles/Theoretical Background – 2 sources

Answer 33

Bauman (1992): Performances are temporally bounded (have a defined beginning and end)

Schrag (2013: 169): Artistic communication intersects with time in two important ways:

1. people often experience time during performance differently than they do in other parts of life;
2. the structure, flow, and timing of a performance may intersect with broader cultural temporal patterns (agricultural, religious, or other calendrical cycles).

Question 34

Emotions: Questions – 3 sources

Answer 34

(Bauman 1992): What is the artist’s frame? What is it about this performance that is meeting these people’s expectations?

(Huron 2006): What pleasantly surprised you in this performance?

(Schrag 2013c): What emotions are commonly associated with this genre? Which emotions are allowed and which are restricted from in this genre? What emotions are associated with each language, dialect, and register used in the genre?

Question 35

Emotions: Principles/Theoretical Background – CLAT w/4 concepts plus 4 more sources

Answer 35

1. Schrag (2013c):

1. The arts have a way of connecting… [the senses with] emotionally charged memories.
2. They also often provide a socially accepted release for intense feelings…
3. Artistic communication can envelop a person’s whole being, allowing gifted performers to magnify emotions in others by playing with their expectations of the art form.
4. The arts are often associated with trance, ecstasy, and other states of overwhelming emotion.

2. Turino (1999): When “indices are tied to “affective foundations,” these indices can create emotional effects because they are seen as ‘true’ parts of the experiences signified.”

3. Racy (1991): Intelligent, emotional feedback from listeners during a performance. . . helps to create ecstasy in the performer (saltana).

4. Huron (2006): emotional response to music depends on culture

5. Keil (1995): Groove is often more important than content in producing emotional responses (groove = a feel of rhythmic patterning and momentum in music that makes us want to move)

Question 36

Emotions: Research Methods – 1 method, 1 source, 3 examples

Answer 36

Interview (Schrag 2013):

1. Watch a video recording of an event and:
   
   • Write down what emotions participants in the video appear to express. Ask someone who was there if they agree with your interpretations.
   • With people who were there: in the video, when they exhibit any emotion, stop the recording and ask what they’re responding to. Make a list of the words they use to describe their emotions and what was going on in the performance that sparked them. Record their comments.
2. Ask friends if they remember an artistic event that evoked very strong emotion in them. Have them describe the event and their reactions.

Question 37

Subject Matter: Questions – 2 CLAT questions + 1 sub-source

Answer 37

Schrag (2013c):

1) Make a list of verbal content in an event and ask: What are they trying to communicate? Is there a lesson? If so, who is the lesson for?
* Murdock (2004): You may want to consult the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM) for examples of themes that are common to many cultures
2) Ask a small group of participants to describe each person, object, place, event, or spiritual being in a performance. Write down their responses.

Question 38

Subject Matter: Principles/Theoretical Background – 3 sources

Answer 38

Schrag (2013c): Information that is unique to the community (histories & spirits), and/or a community’s values, can be discovered by looking for recurring patterns of verbal content in artistic communications.

McLaughlin (1997): subject matter can influence the choice of artistic form (performance features); e.g., the dramatic premise of a play determines its structure in terms of cause and effect, such as “greediness leads to loneliness.”

(Shelemay 2001): music can be used in political contexts to convey condemnatory content as subtext (i.e., for resistance, justice)

Question 39

Community Values: Questions – 4 from 1 source

Answer 39

(Schrag 2013: 171):

• Which community values are commonly associated with or restricted from this genre?
• How do participants interact with authority figures within the event?
• Does the physical organization of the participants show a hierarchal structure?
• In what ways, if any, are participants encouraged to express themselves individually (conformity vs. nonconformity).

Question 40

Community Values: Principles/Theoretical Background – 1 source

Answer 40

(Beeman 1997): “[Artistic communication events are] perhaps the principal means through which people come to understand their world, reinforce their view of it and transform it on both a small scale and a large scale. It can be conservative, or transformative.”

Question 41

Communal Investment: Questions – 1 source, 3 questions

Answer 41

(Schrag 2013c):

1. What is the status, size, expense, and exclusivity of the performance space and performers?
2. How many resources (social, material, financial, and spiritual) does the community invest in this genre?
3. How emotionally invested is the community in this genre?

Question 42

Community Investment: Principles/Theoretical Background – 1 source

Answer 42

(Schrag 2013: 171): An assessment of the social, material, financial, and spiritual resources in an event provides important clues to its importance and influence.