Music Autoethnographies: Making Autoethnography Sing/Making Music Personal

290 Pages·2009·18.35 MB·English

by  Brydie-Leigh Bartleet, Carolyn Ellis

Musical_cover.FINAL.x:Musical-cover.x 19/2/10 4:54 PM Page 1
Music
Music
Autoethnographies
Making Autoethnography Sing / Making Music Personal
Autoethnographies
utoethnography is an autobiographical genre that connects the personal to
the cultural, social, and political. Usually written in the first-person voice,
Aautoethnographic work appears in a variety of creative formats; for example,
short stories, music compositions, poetry, photographic essays, and reflective
journals. While some creative art forms, such as performance and the visual arts,
have gained increasing prominence in the field of autoethnography, musical ventures
in this area have remained relatively uncharted. However, the synergies between
music and autoethnography are promising, ready to be fully realised. For the first
time, this edited volume investigates these synergies by presenting work in which
the relationship between these two areas is explored through the eyes, ears, emotions,
and stories of music and autoethnography practitioners.
This insightful and delightful volume gives voice to words and music in stories that
teach us about the personal experiences of composing, improvising, interpreting,
performing, learning, teaching, and researching music and musicianship from the
perspective of individuals who have devoted lifetimes to those challenges … a new
and valuable contribution to what it means to acquire the knowledge, the skills, and
to fashion the always complex and often conflicted identity of a musician.
Professor H.L. Goodall, Jr.
Professor of Communication, Arizona State University and author of
Living in the Rock n Roll Mystery: Reading Context, Self, and Others as Clues
This is an exceptional book. It provides impressive exemplars of the role of personal
narrative in research and writing … it will be an invaluable reference for students and
researchers journeying into the field of music research. It is an important addition to the
literature associated with research methods, contemporary forms of qualitative research,
and the processes, rhetorical devices and other genre choices for reporting research.
Dr Pamela Burnard
Senior Lecturer in Music Education, University of Cambridge and Co-Editor of
Reflective Practices in Arts Education and the British Journal of Music Education
Edited by
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Carolyn Ellis
Edited by
Music Making Autoethnography Sing /Making Music Personal Brydie-Leigh Bartleet
Autoethnographies and Carolyn Ellis
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First published in 2009 from a completed manuscript presented to
Australian Academic Press
32 Jeays Street
Bowen Hills Qld 4006
Australia
www.australianacademicpress.com.au
© 2009. Copyright for each contribution in the book rests with the listed authors.
Reprinted in 2010
All responsibility for editorial matter rests with the authors. Any views or opinions expressed
are therefore not necessarily those of Australian Academic Press.
The contributions to this publication were blind peer-reviewed by a panel of international
readers, and sub-edited by Catherine Grant.
Reproduction and communication for educational purposes: The Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of the pages of this work, whichever is the
greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a
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Music Autoethnographies is an initiative of Queensland
Conservatorium Research Centre (QCRC), Griffith University,
and embodies its commitment to diverse, innovative, and
practice-based research with direct relevance to contemporary
realities in the global musical arena.
Contents
vi About the Authors
1 Introduction
Making Autoethnography Sing / Making Music Personal
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Carolyn Ellis
Section One
Composing and Improvising
23 Chapter 1
Songwriting and the Creation of Knowledge
David Carless and Kitrina Douglas
39 Chapter 2
Beautiful Here: Celebrating Life, Alternative Music,
Adolescence and Autoethnography
Karen M. Scott-Hoy
57 Chapter 3
Musical Artefacts of My Father’s Death:
Autoethnography, Music, and Aesthetic Representation
Chris J. Patti
73 Chapter 4
Creativity and Improvisation: A Journey into Music
Peter Knight
v
Section Two
Interpreting and Performing
87 Chapter 5
Bye Bye Love
Stacy Holman Jones
101 Chapter 6
Evoking Spring in Winter: Some Personal Reflections
on Returning to Schubert’s Cycle
Stephen Emmerson
121 Chapter 7
Letting it Go: An Autoethnographic Account
of a Musician’s Loss
Catherine Grant
136 Chapter 8
Becoming a Bass Player: Embodiment in Music
Performance
Chris McRae
Section Three
Learning and Teaching
153 Chapter 9
Studying Music, Studying the Self:
Reflections on Learning Music in Bali
Peter Dunbar-Hall
167 Chapter 10
The Road to Becoming a Musician:
An Individual Chinese Story
Wang Yuyan
181 Chapter 11
“Where Was I When I Needed Me?”
The Role of Storytelling in Vocal Pedagogy
Margaret Schindler
vi ~
Section Four
Researching Identity and Cross-Cultural Contexts
197 Chapter 12
From Ca Tru to the World: Understanding and
Facilitating Musical Sustainability
Huib Schippers
208 Chapter 13
Looking into the Trochus Shell:
Autoethnographic Reflections on a Cross-Cultural
Collaborative Music Research Project
Katelyn Barney and Lexine Solomon
225 Chapter 14
In Memory of Music Research: An Autoethnographic,
Ethnomusicological and Emotional Response to Grief,
Death and Loss in the Aboriginal Community
at Borroloola, Northern Territory
Text and images by Elizabeth Mackinlay
245 Chapter 15
A Way of Loving, A Way of Knowing: Music, Sexuality
and the Becoming of a Queer Musicologist
Jodie Taylor
261 Chapter 16
In Music and in Life:
Confronting the Self Through Autoethnography
Colin Webber
vii
About the Authors
Katelyn Barney, PhD, is Research Officer and Managing Editor of The
Australian Journal of Indigenous Education at the University of
Queensland. Her main research interests include collaborative research
with Indigenous Australian women who perform in contemporary
music contexts, representation and ethics, and reflective writing as a
teaching and learning tool. She teaches a range of topics including
music history, ethnomusicology, popular music, and Indigenous
studies. She is also the Secretary of the International Association for
the Study of Popular Music Australia/New Zealand Branch and
National Treasurer of the Musicological Society of Australia.
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet (co-editor of this volume), PhD, is a Lecturer in
Research and Music Literature at the Queensland Conservatorium
Griffith University. For the past two years she has worked on the
Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre ARC funded project,
Sound Links: Community Music in Australia. She has also worked as a
sessional Lecturer at the University of Queensland, and as a freelance
conductor has worked with ensembles from Australia, Thailand,
Singapore and Taiwan. She has published widely on issues relating to
community music, women conductors, peer-learning in conducting and
feminist pedagogy, and is currently co-editing two music-related books
— Musical Islands: Exploring Connections Between Music, Place and
Research; and Navigating Music and Sound Education. She is also on
the editorial board for the International Journal of Community Music.
David Carless, PhD, is currently a senior research fellow in the
Carnegie Research Institute at Leeds Metropolitan University, United
Kingdom. His work focuses on the use of narrative and arts-based
viii
About the Authors
approaches to understanding mental health, identity and wellbeing in
and through physical activity and sport.
Kitrina Douglas, PhD, played golf on the Ladies European Tour for 12
years and has worked in broadcasting and the media. Since 1996 she
has been conducting narrative and arts-based research in the areas of
sport, exercise, and health and is currently an Honorary Visiting
Fellow at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
Peter Dunbar-Hall is an Associate Professor in the Music Education Unit
of Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. His teaching
covers classroom methodology, history and philosophy of music educa-
tion, multiculturalism, and Balinese gamelan. His research focuses on
music pedagogies used by Balinese musicians. Publications by Peter
include Strella Wilson: The Career of an Australian Singer (Redback
Press, 1997) and, with Chris Gibson, Deadly Sounds, Deadly Places:
Contemporary Aboriginal Music in Australia (UNSW Press, 2004).
Carolyn Ellis (co-editor of this volume) is Professor of Communication
and Sociology at the University of South Florida. She has published
four books — Fisher Folk: Two Communities on Chesapeake Bay;
Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, Loss, and Chronic Illness; The
Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography, and
Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work — four
edited collections, and numerous articles and stories. With Arthur
Bochner, she co-edits the book series, Writing Lives: Ethnographic
Narratives. Her work is situated in interpretive and artistic representa-
tions of qualitative research and focuses on autoethnographic stories as
a means to understand and interpret culture and live a meaningful life.
She enjoys dancing, hiking, gardening, and listening to music; her
actual musical talents are minimal.
Stephen Emmerson has been on staff at the Queensland Conservatorium
since 1987 where he teaches courses in music literature and music
research as well as piano, chamber music, and performance practice. He
also convenes the Doctor of Musical Arts program there and is a
member of the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre. As a
pianist, he performs regularly both as soloist and with chamber
ensembles, most notably within the Griffith Trio, Dean-Emmerson-Dean
~ ix