Confronting the Field(note) In and Out of the FieldMusic, Voices, Texts, and Experiences in Dialogue

Abstract Field research is performed. The performance of field research is one of the most meaningful processes engaged by ethnomusicologists to define themselves. And writing about field research—ethnography, field diaries, fieldnotes—is often part of the process of re-performing field research. In this period of post-postmodernism the social sciences can no longer claim that the fieldworker escapes significant participation in the total cultural performance of field research. Performance is, after all, according to Johannes Fabian, “not what they do and we observe; we are both engaged in it” (1990:xv, emphasis added). In recent literature on field research and representation, ethnographers assign greater importance to writing in the field; experiences are transformed into texts, and fieldworkers, informants, friends, and teachers emerge as actors in a social drama.