Shared research practices on and about music: toward decolonizing colonial ethnomusicology

Abstract

The contemporary contexts relating to ethnomusicology and other disciplines interested in music research are changing radically. Two main reasons are at the crux of this change: (1) the presence of music in academia has grown substantially over the last 20 years; consequently, research has considerably increased; (2) the persons who until now have been crucial for our research, especially in the field of ethnomusicology, are now very conscious of their importance for research outcomes and sometimes refuse to accept their “objectification”. The latter can be seen across a large spectrum of contexts, such as those belonging to the field of subaltern studies focusing on depressive urban communities or socially marginalised groups, as well as in the context of “high culture” universesresearch developed by art music performers about contemporary composers, for example. In both cases, the researcher represents an academically powered subject of authority. His/her work aims to promote the involved subjects but, mainly, to validate him/herself as the owner of a kind of knowledge which is socially more qualified. This situation generates deep asymmetries and has been discussed by different scholars, proposing methods and research actions based on “participative-actionresearch” practices. This is the case of Orlando Fals Borda in Colombia (1991, 2003) and Paulo Freire in Brazil (1970, 1990, 1996). This paper proposes to develop a critical approach to the canonical practices of research in music and ethnomusicology. I suggest the possibility of building shared research practices in music and ethnomusicology, based on the articulation of individual knowledges and experiences (academic/non-academic; performance/composition; practice/theory) for the construction of common new knowledge. In this sense, shared research practices can generate a de-hierarchisation of knowledges and, therefore, define a possible condition for the construction of more ecological relations between different subjects involved in research.