Documenting the Musical Event: Observation, Participation, Representation

This chapter reviews approaches to the empirical documentation of music as found in comparative musicology, folklore studies, and through the fifty-year history of ethnomusicology. Means of gathering and measuring research data are shown to be linked to available technology as well as to prevailing intellectual paradigms. The central part of the chapter focuses on empirical aspects of participant-observation, including the keeping of field notes, interviewing, photography, and audio- and video-recording. Good practice conventions for data preservation are explained and illustrated. The chapter's coda emphasizes the importance of ethics in research that documents the voices of live people.