Studying Congregational Music: Chapter 4
“Ethnography affords information and invites grounded analyses and interpretations—of local beliefs, practices, and meanings—that cannot be obtained as reliably, or at all, by any other means.
The scholar interested in what hymns sound like in ecclesiastical performance, how and why they are sung, what they mean, and how they affect the singers would find ethnographic methods invaluable.”
Ethnography in the Study of Congregational Music
By Jeff Todd Titon
Abstract
In this chapter, Titon asks: (1) What is ethnography? (2) What theories and methods offer a foundation for ethnographic research, and does religion present special difficulties? and (3) Why incorporate ethnography into studies of congregational music? Ethnography is the systematic description of culture within a social group. It is central to the research of ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and anthropologists. Doing ethnography requires that the researcher observe cultural performances (such as congregational singing) in person and over months, even years, to gather information. This fieldwork requires “being there.” Besides observation, it involves note-taking, interviewing, audio and visual recording, etc. The ethnographic data is categorized and analyzed to arrive at an accurate and thorough description of the aspect of the culture under study. Often, ethnographers interpret the meanings of the cultural practices they describe, for other scholars, for the community under study, and sometimes for the public at large.
Ethnography of religion presents special problems because the researcher’s subject position, insider member of the community or outsider, affects the researcher’s access to, selection, categorization, analysis, and interpretation of the information that is obtained. Subject position and access will also be affected by the researcher’s gender, class, etc. Ethnography offers the researcher experiential eye- and ear-witness to congregational music under study as well as a thorough data-set that can be obtained in no other way. When ethnographic research is possible, ethnographic-based interpretation offers a more reliable grounding in factual information than interpretation that is based on secondhand sources and documents (such as hymnals) alone.