The Meeting Room as Fieldwork Site

While we rightly pride ourselves on great depth and nuance in working with communities as ethnomusicologists, it is harder to claim the same qualities in how many of us regard, approach, and describe power structures. With public-facing ethnomusicology on the rise, there is both room and a need for more insightful approaches to working constructively with those in power, as various forms of structures (public authorities, NGOs, funding bodies, and even businesses) are crucial in turning projects with ambitions beyond academic impact into reality, benefiting musicians, communities, and other stakeholders. This is a critical juncture that distinguishes applied ethnomusicology; in this arena, a project without a clear strategy and support is just an idea. This chapter is based on more than forty years of negotiating spaces between dreams and ambitions of musicians and communities from myriad cultures on one hand, and on the other the ideas, forces and structures that drive those that fund, support, or otherwise enable cultural practices in different countries.

Prologue

What happens when an ethnographic, cultural relativistic approach to arts funding runs head-on into a “fine arts” approach governed by assumptions of excellence, appropriate targets of funding, and methods of distributing funds? This chapter, based on twenty-three years (1978–2000) working at the National Endowment for the Arts, will respond to this question through my personal conceptual and methodological challenges and experiences. When the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities were created in 1965, there was talk of creating a third endowment for folklore. This effort was unsuccessful, but it points to the belief at the time that American folk art traditions would not be well served by the federal endowments. There was much truth to this, as I and my colleagues regularly bumped into “glass ceilings and walls” that silently worked against us in supporting our field of hundreds of cultural traditions and thousands of art forms. My ethnomusicological training and experience were invaluable, not only in understanding the art forms and responding to their needs, but also understanding the biases of the institutional culture in which we were housed. At the same time, while certain aspects of my training at UCLA helped in navigating the waters of arts funding, much of the knowledge I applied to my work was learned “on the job” in extra-academic activities and mentorships rather than in university courses and seminars. This line of reflection will yield observations and recommendations to improve training and to increase ethnomusicology’s applicability and social and cultural relevance.

Activate Ethnomusicology Everywhere

Most ethnomusicology graduate programs emphasize research and teaching, with rare mentions of how to apply those skills beyond the academy or how to develop additional skills that might serve an ethnomusicology graduate student in their hunt for meaningful employment. In this chapter, the author discusses how to implement the idea of connecting music to social justice from the beginning of an ethnomusicology curriculum. The author advocates for incorporating more public scholars into the classroom environment and taking students out of the classroom into those public spaces, from museums to out-of-school arts programs to philanthropic institutions to service organizations. The chapter illustrates how to balance the academic syllabus with listening to and creating podcasts, reading blogs, long-form journalism, and professional organization publications affiliated with museums, arts nonprofits, and libraries, as well as specific job functions such as development, community engagement, marketing. The chapter explores how to reduce elitism against those who choose not to pursue a PhD beyond their master’s research and how to reconceive social justice-centered research in an entirely new environment.

Rethinking the Engagement of Ethnomusicologists with Performance and Applied Music Curricula

Music schools and conservatories in the United States and abroad focus primarily on training performers; one of the reasons ethnomusicologists have had such difficulty expanding their employment opportunities in such institutions is because they have not given enough thought to how they can productively contribute to performance curricula. The field of ethnomusicology has engaged creatively with many subdisciplines in the humanities and social sciences, of course. But while this focus has resulted in insightful publications, it has typically held little immediate relevance for performers. A surprising number of ethnomusicology programs do not encourage applied music-making of any sort as a required part of training in the discipline. In general, ethnomusicology does not dialogue sufficiently with applied music faculty or students. This chapter begins with reflection on what aspiring performers of the twenty-first century need to know in order to be professionally successful and continues with a consideration of how coursework offerings by ethnomusicologists can be retooled so as to contribute directly to the requirements of students in BM programs: to ear training, music theory, orchestration, junior and senior recitals, and so on. Lastly, the chapter covers an approach to teaching world music courses that focuses both on applied performance and on pressing contemporary issues (community outreach, social justice, financial exploitation, etc.) that link world traditions to other repertoires and make their relevance immediately apparent.

Introduction

In this chapter, co-editors León F. García Corona and Kathleen Wiens introduce and highlight the challenges, opportunities, and often overlooked importance of public-facing work in ethnomusicology. They articulate some of the crucial perspectives it can provide to the field of ethnomusicology. They show how and why public-facing work has been perceived, by academic culture, as "secondary" or "peripheral" to academic aims. They advocate for the importance and relevance of ethnomusicology in our society at large and shed light into the blind spots of current academic ethnomusicology programs.

Running Things

Ethnomusicologists equip themselves to study and understand complex systems of human thought and action, and to build relationships with individuals. Navigating personality and process, ethnomusicologists can listen deeply and act with diplomacy in balancing ambitious and broad creative vision with the smallest of logistical details while fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration and community engagement. This essay touches on the nature of public-facing executive leadership based in a public university and spanning arts and humanities, pointing out resonances with ethnomusicological training and practice such as “language” learning and meaningful communication. Corresponding examples of shortcomings in ethnomusicological training are given, such as needed emphases on conflict management, technological competence, and brevity.

Sustainable Ethnomusicology

Most ethnomusicological training requires fieldwork and lab techniques in which students gain technical skills related to the acquisition of data related to fieldwork. Although the work we do as ethnomusicologists sits at the forefront of gathering engaging, relevant content related to musical expressions, most ethnomusicologists are ill equipped in delivering their findings to a broader audience through the use of new media and post-production techniques such as video, sound, and image editing, web development, database administration, and network administration, among many others. Although plenty of literature about developing these skills exists as stand-alone instruction, in this essay I present a bird’s-eye view of content production from an ethnomusicological perspective, providing an understanding of not only content production but how intersects with revenue and ethnomusicological goals. I do so by sharing more than twenty years of experience as an IT specialist and consultant and by exploring some examples of content production at Smithsonian Folkways.

Control, Contribute, Collaborate

This chapter identifies tools that scholarly training brings to collaborative projects, and also identifies aspects of collaborative work that run contrary to the self-defined and self-guided nature of scholarly work. It suggests ways to modify and expand the ethnomusicologists’ toolkit in order to adapt to new forms of collaboration, and therefore thrive in culture and heritage projects and institutions. Public culture and heritage professionals bring a myriad of skill sets and backgrounds to every project. Furthermore, many projects are defined by stakeholder desires and institutional parameters. The culture clash between “self-guided” and “collaborative” requires navigation, adaptation, and reorientation of one’s own approach to work. The chapter uses examples from museum-based projects and operations to reveal the value of “pivoting” and adaptation: why and how professionals should and can do so, and the end result of doing so or not doing so. The lessons can apply to work in a variety of culture and heritage projects and institutions.

Navigating a Path toward a Public-Facing Career in Ethnomusicology

As preparation for a fieldwork-based discipline, ethnomusicology programs train students to engage with interlocutors and communities to understand the dynamics of music creation and use in relation to cultural practices. Since this focus on training is common to all ethnomusicologists, whatever their career trajectory after graduate school, it seems relevant to explore the ways that programs are and are not meeting the professional development needs of emerging scholars. While the importance of basic research skills cannot be underestimated, there is less of a disciplinary focus on the ways that ethnomusicology students learn to engage productively as individuals participating in a community. That is, disciplinary training generally does not include structured reflection on the range of skills that the scholar needs to effectively engage as a partner with their communities of study. These skills can include anything from basic local business practices that will help them engage effectively as participants and advocates, to personal life skills. This chapter explores ways that selected ethnomusicology programs in the United States endeavor to bridge this professionalization divide, and suggests ways that students can take charge of their own professional development needs in this area from the perspective of a public-facing ethnomusicologist/professional career adviser.

Freelancing and Consulting

In following a public sector career, it is sometimes possible to secure a permanent and prestigious position at a high-profile leaving the academy. This process, however, is frequently not immediate and often requires a significant amount of practical experience, which, in turn, is often attained through freelance work. Although, in recent years, freelancing has come to symbolize a liminal state of unemployment, it can also be approached as a period of strategic preparation. Also, it should be noted that for some ethnomusicologists, establishing themselves as successful freelancers or consultants leads to flexible and rewarding career options. In this chapter, I present some basic information on how to get started in the world of public sector ethnomusicology as a freelancer, addressing some important questions such as: how to develop a consultant presence; how to determine honoraria and fees; how to overcome the lack of institutional support and self-promote among cultural organizations, educational or community groups, and/or for-profit entities; how to approach already-established scholars and cultural networks; and how to engage institutions in supporting freelance-driven projects. I do so by sharing my experience as someone who has spent her entire career in the public sector—much of it as a freelancer—and by giving practical advice and a general orientation to those interested in exploring public sector ethnomusicology as a long-term professional commitment.