Critical Review #2: Titon 2002

I feel like a lot of what this article is commenting on is basic common sense. Maybe this is because I’m already experiencing some of what he’s discussing in the article. Perhaps I’m becoming too immersed in and familiar with the pitfalls and intricacies of studying ethnomusicology and think what is obvious to me would be obvious to everyone. There’s clearly a lot more to learn about the process, but many of Titon’s points seem like things we already know, or that people could easily infer. For example, it’s clear that your perspective will change as you become more immersed in a culture and you should keep a conscious record as it changes. Many of the difficulties described make a lot of sense, though. In another class I learned about the process of skill learning, such as learning to play an instrument. While the brain is encoding this ability, the process is conscious and must be thought through step by step. Once the skill is learned, however, the steps become fluid and it becomes significantly more difficult to break the steps down and explain the process of the action to others. This undoubtedly must contribute to an ethnomusicologist’s difficulty in trying to convey the musical practices of a culture or at least their experiences learning said musical practices. Titon also did a good job of demonstrating many of his points. For example, it’s remarkable how much more detail you can obtain from a consultant by asking open-ended questions rather than leading ones. This way they can take the lead and recount their experiences and perhaps provide valuable information the interviewer hadn’t even considered to ask about.

I hadn’t previously considered the idea of paying a community to study them. I understand that some compensation such as advocacy and publicity of the music being studied would be a logical mutual understanding, but doesn’t payment change the relationship of the interviewer and community much more significantly? Whenever money is involved it generally complicates matters. When the interviewer more or less becomes the employer of a community, does that create an expectation or pressure for the people to act in a certain way? Or if the community is portrayed in a light they’re unhappy with, even if it is accurate, might they then expect more money from an interviewer, creating an awkward situation?