Ballet folklorico presentation
Ballet folklorico presentation
All:
Please read and respond (via "Comments") to at least 3 of the following observations/queries arising from this presentation. Both team members and other class members should comment, and should particularly focus on ways in which insights from this presentation reflect, nuance, or contradict insights from your own fieldwork. Make sure your comments address this latter point.
Website at http://members.cox.net/robvela1/WWW/
1. Good description of original research construct and how that evolved, and good articulation of necessity of scaling-down scope. In what ways might the (necessary and inevitable) scaling-down of a project’s original parameters help to focus that presentation’s goals? Give examples from your own team project
2. Did language skills or ethnicity play a role in this research? Do language skills or ethnicity (or other markers of group identity) play a role in various teams’ research? What roles do they play? Please make specific reference to various “markers of identity” which you observed your informants to be using towards you the fieldworker. In other words, how were your informants identifying you, and what impact did that have on the nature of your work together?
3. Nice comment: in presenting research, fieldworkers can choose to “go through our individual experiences”. Excellent observations about the differing (but complementary) perspectives of 2 different fieldworkers. What does this make possible? ALG spoke in an earlier comment and presentation of the ways in which having both (or all) fieldworkers present in a situation enriched their observations. It would seem that threads of both continuity and discontinuity might emerge from different fieldworkers’ accounts. How can you allow for this and exploit those threads to aid your analysis?
4. Good observations about evolution of insights, observation of patterns, and the way they shaped subsequent research and fieldwork. Please articulate how the interaction of these factors shaped or evolved your own team research.
5. Good observation about overlap between informants: that is, different fieldworkers encountering the same informants in different environments. Did this occur for your team as well? What was the impact of this overlap? Did it enrich your team’s insights? How?
6. Good observations about presumptions w/ which fieldwork began, and how they changed (especially about the target community’s desire for outreach versus lack of such desire). How do you do fieldwork with a group that doesn’t particularly want it done? How do you win over informants? Give examples from your own fieldwork.
7. Use of keywords: “family”, “heritage”, “authenticity”, “competition.” What would be the shortlist of your fieldwork’s “keywords”?
8. How/why is this idiom ethnically specific? Is there something about its function that tends to make it ethnically specific? Please express an opinion backed up by comments made by the presenters.
9. What are the implications of informants’ self-identification as “insider” versus “outsider”? How might that impact the fieldworker’s assessment of that informant’s insights? Give examples from your own fieldwork of informants supplying these “insider versus outsider” constructions, and articulate possible motives.
10. Does this contrasting self-identification reflect informants’ contrasting perceived roles as “historian” versus “teacher”? Might these two roles entail different agendas or goals? What methodology would let you investigate, model, and interpret these agendas or goals? Who were the “historians” in your team fieldwork? Who were the “teachers”? Who got more respect? Why?
11. What is the relationship, in this idiom or others, between “authenticity” and “place”? Does place confer authenticity? Must one come from that place? Merely visit that place? Own (physical or communicative) artifacts of that place? Unpack this in light of your own fieldwork.
posted by CJS at 12:51 PM
23 Comments:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
1. I think focusing down the original group is a good way to get at better detail. In our group, we had a few more informants we wanted to include, but realized we could get a better feel if we could narrow it down and spend more time with each of them (rather then spreading yourself thin trying to get to know 10 people).
3. I liked the way some groups went collectively to different fieldwork experiences. I think everyone has their own perception about what they observe and what their potential goals are. Sure, a group may agree to find out about a certain aspect of their informants, but each person may go about it a different way to yield different results.
7. In our own fieldwork, I think some of our own key terms would be: adaptation, social perspectives, relationship, and space. Our informants adapt like no one I’ve ever seen. Monday night they could be in a college type bar with a crowd 10 years younger than them, and Tuesday night they could be surrounded by 60 year olds. Those spaces and social perspectives change how they perform and what they perform. I put “relationship” because our informants really wanted us in their lives. They enjoyed us coming around their gigs and we still go to their performances after the research is over because we like them as people and they like having new friends. They are all really easy going and aren’t afraid to let new people into their world.
1) One thing that our group had to deal with, was the different mariachis in town. We felt that we could not effectively complete this project in time and focus on all the groups. So we decided to focus on one professional group and one student group. Luckily we recognized this before starting any major fieldwork.
2) language skills were huge in mariachi music. Many times I would have to stop an informant and ask them to spell out words for me. Once I got used to it it got better, but when certain words were said in the proper way, I could not understand the words much less the spelling. Luckily our informants were very nice about this, once they got to know us.
5) At the end of rehearsals our informants would talk about up coming gigs. During one such talk they spoke of a possible gig and then started mentioning that the teacher at the middle school's group would probably get that one. They never said anything negative about him, but in one interview they did express the competitive nature of mariachi bands. Each one is competing to be the best, and the one with the most gigs. This made me want to ask about their knowledge of the middle group and the teacher, but I refrained, to afraid of losing reliable informants.
2. I was worried about being the only white person in the rehearsal observation of a BF group, but it had no impact (to my view). Most of the communication was done in English. The only language barrier we came across was in transcribing an interview from a Maestro… and Rob took car of that. I think it is best to be aware of ethnicity and language differences but not let them effect your interactions. “Be appropriate.”
4. In every research or learning experience your view changes over time (if you are paying any attention). It is good to let new knowledge evolve your way of thinking and if not teach you something new then lead you to more questions. In our cast, insights led to more questions, more questions led to insight… and it kept going back and forth. Addressing these insights and patterns led to a better understand of what was going on in the community and led us to be better informed observers.
9. In the oral historian’s self-identification of being an outsider I think that he was giving us a warning as to not group all Hispanics into the BF community. As he accepted the role as an outside he became a ‘novice’ of sorts and allowed himself to be taught about this culture that was by ethnicity his but by background, not.
1. Scaling down the project helps get to a specific phenomenon in more detail. With our project we could have visited other Asian churches but it would have become difficult to invest sufficient time with these various groups to respectfully share aspects of their religious worship.
3. I noticed a greater detail of insight by working collaboratively with Megan and Olivia. Each had different ideas and insights into our project that really developed our research more. I think this collaborative process may help prevent bias and prejudice from one person's perspective.
7. "Family" is definitely an idea so closely related to our research. Walking into the Chinese church, the community is very close and warm. The members of this community quickly accepted us, and everyone seem to know each other much more personally than our own experiences in our respective churches.
1. As talked about in one of the questions for one of the Mariachi groups, time did play a significant factor in the scope of our fieldwork and project. This, in my opinion, did end up being very constructive because of our group decision to focus mostly on the sub-community that participated in the event at Melt. Because we where able to focus our energies on one venue of this sub-community, we where able to get a very in-depth and wide ranging details about what had gone on over the duration of the semester. This made me more aware of the building and maintaining of relationships and the degree of importance the regulars placed upon going out this night to continue strong friendships with one another.
2. Because it is of the opinion of our target sub community that salsa is to only be sung in Spanish, this in itself became a marker for cultural identity. These songs are traditionally song is Spanish, always have and, to them, always will be. So hearing a song sung is Spanish is one aspect of many that makes up the DNA, if you will, of why this music sounds the way it does. Of course this is not the only thing, because we are all well aware there are other genres of music that are traditionally sung is Spanish. But this is revealing and an important part of the identity to the salsa community because language in the music is something that makes it identifiable as an insiders music.
3. I believe the best way to go about comparing notes with the other field workers and dealing with the similarities and the differences is a matter of identifying what it is that we saw. Contrary to the initial idea that the similarities in observation are the important insights, I believe that the contrary ideas get at what could be some of the most important and enriching parts of the target sub-community. For example, one discrepancy in our groups work was the importance, and the role of which the dancing was a part of this community. One opinion was that is was a necessary step toward gaining acceptance as an insider while another opinion suggests that it is acceptable in this community to not dance and just watch. By investigating these differences where they came up I came to find that actually both answers where right because the dancing is a big part of developing your relationship with the people there and becoming more comfortable with one another, one common way to gain insider status. But it is also true, that other valued members of the community can be very big insiders and be simply interacting with the people that are there and sharing something else that these people share in common, like the music. For example, I never once saw DJ Mario dance, but he was obviously an insider, as it seemed traditionally members of the community throughout the night would by him a drink and have a very enthusiastic and friendly conversation. In addition, he had a vast knowledge about salsa and had strong relationships with many members of the community and friendships long time members of the community that no longer even live in Lubbock.
1. In our project, we had to narrow our scope as well. Initally we had considered taking a group trip to D/FW so we could see how the salsa scene there was different from salsa here in Lubbock. That idea had to go because of our schedules. We also had intended to attend more events, public and private. Eventually we narrowed it down pretty much to only Melt and Jake's, with a very brief look at Southbeach. Our project then became more of a compare/contrast between the two main places where we did our fieldwork.
2. Surprisingly, ethnicity wasn't really an issue in our group. Language, however was a little bit of an issue. Most salsa music is in Spanish and our collective knowledge of Spanish is a little limited. So, when it came time to translate things and explain the songs to each other in group meetings we each sort of used whatever knowledge we had of Spanish to figure things out. It was a little like typing with one finger. One person would know one word or phrase, and when we came to a dead-end, we got online to find the meaning.
5. Our group did encounter a few informants in different places. We found some people "from" Melt at Jake's and several of our informants new our other informants. It was a very close-knit community. It actually helped lend credibility to the people who told us about differences between the two places - because seeing them at both places proved that they hadn't, for example, just walked into Jake's once, decided they didn't liked it, and told us when we came along that Jake's was bad and didn't have "real" salsa. It also supported the welcoming atmosphere and the comraderie(sp?) of the community because most of our informants verbalized in one way or another that they didn't want to be elitist about it because they wanted to expand salsa to accomodate a bigger audience and invite more people to enjoy it and take advantage of the salsa nights around town.
Danielle’s Ballet Folklorico Comments
2. In regards to the salsa project, language and ethnicity were not points of difficulty in doing our fieldwork. For example, we were able to speak to our informants normally in English, and that was even what our informants were doing when speaking among themselves (rather than using Spanish among themselves). So, we fit right in with that respect. Language, however, was a problem when it came to song texts since all of the songs were strictly in Spanish. Ethnicity was not a stumbling block because the salsa community was being intentionally inclusional, and didn’t give us any guff about not being Latino.
5. With the salsa community, there was very little overlap of informants. This is due to the fact that the crowds at each salsa venue had differing concepts and expectations about what salsa should be and what role it should play in the community. The other crowds were aware of one another, but did not tend to mix. However, while there was a sense of clash in definitions of salsa, the differing opinions did not tend to lend itself to personal attacks or rivalries amongst groups (they were simply different).
9. Self identification of “insider verses outsider” was especially interesting in the situation we encountered with the dance contest. There was a couple who always attended and whom the crowd saw every week and considered “insiders,” or their friends. There was an opposing couple who were dance instructors at Strictly Ballroom- they expected to be treated as insiders and labeled themselves as such simply because they could “do the salsa dance.” However, they had not established the extensive relationships with the community, so even though the second couple called themselves insiders, the community did not view them as such and chose the “regular” couple to win the dance contest.
1.We had to scale down too – because of the topic switch. I would have liked to have had the time to track graduates and their commercial success.
5. We had a bit of overlap, but the context of the observation space was very similar so the only differences we got were observer based as opposed to environment based.
11. for our group, students are paying to learn how to create and/or adapt to an existing space for commercial purposes.
1) The scaling-down of a projects's original parameters to help focus certain goals....Our group had to do a lot of that. We had originally intended to observe multiple groups, draw all kinds of different conclusions and find repertoire similarities and what the songs mean to the audience, but we had scheduling issues, mostly, and we ended up not being able to do as much fieldwork as we would have liked...so we didn't end up with the project we originally had wanted. We had to scale it down significantly to what it is now.
2) Our informants judged us a little to quickly, I think. We are obviously not Mexican-American, Mexican, or Hispanic...and therefore I think they found it a little hard to take us seriously. Why would we, after all, be interestd in "their" music if it is not part of our own immediate culture? I don't know about Ian or Seong, but my Spanish skills are a little sub-par (though they do exist) and I think that it would have shocked them in a potentially positive way if, when they asked us what songs we wanted them to play for us, one of us had been able to answer without butchering the Spanish. This was a boundary that in a semesters time we found it almost impossible to get around, and it kept a very strong "them and us" attitude in our fieldwork on both sides.
6) If you have a group of people who don't really want to be the subject of your fieldwork, I don't think there is a whole lot you can do about that. That doesn't mean that you have to quit studying...it just means that you have to approach it differently. It may be harder, for example, to conduct interviews or get "insider" information. I think you could win them over, though, if part way through your work you show them what you've been doing with it. Maybe then they would see "Oh, these people are legit and they really want to get an accurate account of what we're doing. I have some great information for them. Let me share it." I kind of want to continue working with this mariachi stuff, and I think that's what I might do.
1. I think it is easier if the project goals are scaled down. It is simple for a group to start off gung ho, ready to conquer the world. Toning down your thoughts and dealing with a very specific group in a sub-community can help the team get more information on that sub-group by controlling this specified group. We did the same thing with VOL. We were going to to 4 or 5 different churches, but felt that due to time restraints and sheer numbers, focusing on one group would be an easier task.
2. Surprisingly, ethnicity didn't play as much of a role as I had originally thought it would. I am glad that there were no language barriers, other than lingo and slang that was easily identifiable. I am glad that being a giant white boy didn't hinder my getting an inside scoop on the sub-group. I was glad they these people took me as a singer and not a white singer. They wanted me there to help with the sound, not because I was white. I enjoyed the open armed response from the group as a definite outsider.
6. I think that to win someone over that doesn't necessarily want to be won over is difficult, but it can be done. Just like the Mariachi group with Tony, they won over their informants by putting forth the effort and going to many rehearsals to show the group that they meant business and they wanted to do this research. I think if an ethnographer goes into a study head on and shows the informants and group that they really are making an effort, and possibly talking with them about their group, it can open up the doors to make the group feel more at ease.
7. keywords in our field: faith, tradition, culture, worship, authenticity, ritual space
2. Unlike some of my peers, I believe that language plays a very important role in this research. There are many things that simply watching a Ballet Folklorico performance wouldn’t tell you. Think about the following questions and their role in this fieldwork:
a) Why did you (the informant) decide to pursue involvement with this group of dancers?
b) What is the importance of Ballet Folklorico in your lifestyle and group of friends/family?
c) Are there certain dance moves that represent things that the common person (that isn’t involved in dance) wouldn’t understand unless informed about?
4. When learning about Asian Worship music, especially during Ching’s interview it was very interesting to learn about how their church has evolved over the past few years. For example how their song leaders are chosen and how they take turns leading each week. We also learned about how they “borrow” traditions from other church’s they’ve seen or experienced since Christianity isn’t common in China, they’ve had to form new traditions on their own.
re: language - both D & Z seemed to struggle with Spanish, so they both seemed a little shy about talking to someone who might NOT be in the same boat. I don't know if they ever found out that my Spanish is maybe a bit better than theirs. Neither seemed to think twice about sharing info w/folks outside their culture group (L & S, specifically), and were more than happy to help.
re: scaling-down - absolutely necessary, always, in my opinion. Its good to do this after the first few fieldwork experiences, because by this time you've got some info (hopefully) & some direction based on that info.
keywords: family, dance, social learning, gender roles, history & heritage, and FUN. anytime you get to throw knives around is FUN, let's not forget that.
2. There were quite a few markers my informants used to identify me. The first is a graduate student from Tech. They weren’t particularly comfortable with this identity, as they didn’t understand why we were doing a project about SPC bluegrass even though I had explained it several times. They also saw me as a girl from Alabama. This marker they were fairly comfortable with, because it meant they perceived we shared similar values, beliefs, and musical backgrounds. They also saw me as a folk musician. I introduced myself as a traditional Irish flute player. My SPC informants took to that identification really well, because in their eyes we shared similar musical skills/priorities.
6. I think one of the key things to remember about fieldwork, whether your informants want it done or not, is that this field is as much about building relationships as it is about getting quantifiable data. How does that translate to getting the job done? When your informants don’t really want the fieldwork done, you instead put the focus on the art. Show respect for their expertise and their method of pedagogy, which in most cases involves the novice musician/dancer waiting and watching, not immediately asking tons of questions. By showing that we respect them and their pedagogy, we demonstrate our desire to learn and develop relationships that benefit both informant and fieldworker, instead of coming in with a pith helmet and stealing cultural data. My informants would politely talk to me at first, but as long as I had some sort of recording device/notebook they didn’t really interact with me. I finally came in one day, and just didn’t take the notebook out. That was the day I got D’s history and the day R invited me to the Meadow session. I don’t think the absence of recording data alone got me invited to the Meadow session, but it did open the door for the conversation to happen in the first place.
7. “Hospitality” “Community” “Apprenticeship” “Practicality” These keywords sum up the idea that the SPC program is a method of teaching musicians practical skills, as well as the idea that this music is a means of passing on a set of cultural values. The more I reflect on this project, the more I see the hospitality and community this music/program perpetuates in different generations.
Scaling down the scope of the fieldwork is a great idea instead of trying to cover too much and never knowing if you missed something by doing too much at one time. By not scaling down your scope also might cause trouble in the community by making yourself to known into their sub-community without really getting the full grasp of what you are researching. By getting the basis of the sub-community within a couple of groups will let you get variety and get more connected within the sub-community rather then trying too meet with everyone or a few more than you can handle. Our team had to scale our focus since lead guitarists can cover all genres and variety of music and I am glad because we got to be more connected with our infromants and as they did us.
Encountering the same informants but in different environments is what we experienced with one of our informants. Our informant played at one venue one night and another the next. These two venues/environments were different within the realm of age, music, space, and reason. By going to these different venues which were two different types of night clubs/lounge type places helped our team get a better perspective on our informants and how they are versitile and able to change repertiore from focusing on dance type "good time" music to laid back, drinking music.
1. We started with "mariachi." That seemed to be a broad scope when three other groups were dealing with similar subject matter. I found it useful to speak with the other teams to find what their focus was early on. That way we could colaborate, but also make sure not to step on each others toes. This helped in our limitations that we needed to put on ourselves.
2. I think you'll find from our observations that we found ethnicity to be a possible issue. We did not get to spend enough time to get into the group's "clique." We were already identified as people that were only interested in acquiring information from them, and they did not see any benefit from their side. It's very similar to the music industry. Money talks and bulls**t walks.
4. I know that personally I did not want to deal with this group after seeing and hearing things I wasn't supposed to see. Also, I was upset about some dynamics in the group when dealing with people that would ethnically be outsiders. It's too bad that I couldn't look beyond these things. I've experienced and put myself in these situations before, but I've usually made sure to either ignore the ignorance, or never deal with such people again because they are usually not worth the effort.
1. As Stefan mentioned we had to switch our project, and I as well wish we could have looked at those who had graduated and moved away from SPC. RTB was only a limited example and one in which his musical career is only just beginning. At the very beginning of our project, before the switch, I think our entire group had some pretty lofty goals considering the time constraints we had to work within. After the switch we really had to sit down and figure out what was necessary and what was going to be redundant. Therefore we focused on the apprenticeship aspect first, and did limited research in the areas of those from SPC who had graduated or were going out and attending events such as the Meadow Musical.
3. Stefan and I both attended RTB’s concert at the local watering hole and we both spent time observing different as well as the same aspects about the evening. Being able to collaborate and use our individual skills at the same time helped me have a greater understanding and allowed for greater insight into our observations. When it comes to continuity or discontinuity I think that the only thing to do is incorporate it into the analysis. By looking at both perspectives a deeper insight can be gained and quite possibly it could lead to data that shows neither perspective is right but only hinted at something deeper.
11. I think that when anything is taught at an establishment of education, especially higher education, a sense of authenticity is built in to what is being done. By learning from people who have degrees or who have lived and experienced what they are teaching it incorporates a bias, to modify the phrase, “innocent until proven guilty”, in this case I would say, “right until proven wrong”. At SPC the students are getting the opportunity to both experience and learn from someone who had experienced.
2. In my particular research at Cavazos Middle School, ethnicity was an important factor mainly because the instructor was of a different ethnicity than the students as well as the people who originally played the music. This made him more open to me because he is an ethnic outsider even though he might not necessarily be considered and outsider to the Mariachi musical community.
4. In my teams research, as we began to learn more about the musical community we began to mainly narrow down what were the key factors that we needed to focus on. At the beginning of our research, at least for me, I felt like I didn’t have a clue about what we were to focus on but as we got out there, it became easier.
11. One thing that came to mind with this relationship of place and authenticity is the idea that place doesn’t just include a physical location necessarily, but also a place in time. This makes it impossible to “merely visit that place” to have knowledge of authenticity unless you were actually there.
3. I find it interesting the parallells that may be drawn between this and the manner in which the U.S. Supreme Court issues opinions. The minority (or sometimes multiple minorities) issue(s) a(n) descenting opinion(s) which are published along with the verdict. This is not to say that in Ethnomusicology that there really needs to be a "verdict," or more importantly, that there >is< a verdict to be had in the first place. However, the field is certainly based on precedent, just as our legal system is.
More directly to the question, I find relevance to their individual experiences and it strikes a chord with my carefully avoiding reading Amber's field notes from the radio station until after I had written mine. Keeping our (or Ballet Folklorico's or anyone's) perspectives as unique and separate as possible, does not create cognitive dissonance but allows the audience to compare and analytically contrast and finally synthesize their own understanding not only of the event, but of many unique insight that one may capture only by a consideration of the unique separate opinions. Which leads to:
1. This all gets back to what is essentially the depth verses breadth polemic. I get the general feeling from most that in this case depth was preferred over breadth. I feel like the area we had to deal with was so incredibly broad and so dense with 50 years of history that directly relates to proper analysis of present performance, that, as I mentioned earlier, that we needed to stick our finger into as many different areas as possible to best present the problem. However, I could be setting it up all wrong in my head.
7: I would say reinsertion/reacquisition, mythopoesis, and iconography
2.Language did play a role. We received a book, a recorded interview, and a packet of information in all Spanish. Many of the titles and terminology were in Spanish also. Daniel said he could relate to me and Liz and our ‘whiteness’ background. I was surprised that he stereotyped us like that. However, because of our color, I am sure that people went ahead and explained more thoroughly.
8.A large function of Ballet Folklorico is to continue the stories, history, and pride of the heritage. This would make it ethnically specific. Why would a non-Hispanic person want to take part? Why wouldn’t a non-Hispanic person want to take part? It’s like Brian being part of the Gospel choir, why not? It’s a good time and he learned great things.
9.Our ‘outsider,’ Daniel could relate to our lack of knowledge and thirst for it. He was very excited to give us resources from how he learned. It was great to ask for suggestions on how to approach to community as ‘outsiders.’ Our ‘insider,’ Zenaida seemed like she didn’t know where to start and how in depth to go.
1. In our field work not only did we decide to talk to two groups in lubbock to get our information from, but we asked them what they thought their purpose was, and why they did it, after a few meetings we seemed to see the information they were providing really kept to the idea that it was a cultural identity issue so we stuck to that because that is where the majority of our information was coming from.
2. I think the majority of the time they definitely kept me as an observer, but when giving me information they gave me a lot of information that really hit home because they were talking about Mexican culture and talked to me on a level that i would understand from my past, as opposed to my other team members who they were also informing this information to for the first time.
3. Well we definitely stuck with the information that we found to be consistent from group to group and read about because this seemed to be the most common information, not nescesarrily always right, but it was what was being taught at this time. We ran with this information because at times it seemed to be the most important information in the overall picture of mariachi.
1. Our team did not have actual team meeting for presentation. We just had short talk about that Ian would present video work, Kelly would present overall website, and me just explain my own fieldwork, but I think that it went O.K. However, I saw many good thing from other teams that some of them were very organized and prepared. With well organizing, they had very confidential and informative speech. 2. While having this project, we ask one guy initialed A who is member of mariachi and goes to TTU to help getting their rehearsal. And he did it. I ask him several different times about that mariachi band. He answered to me very nicely. Because he is from another country too, so he and I have something common thought. As both we are being foreigner, we get more intimate together. 5. Yes, we had some overlapping information. I went River Smith restaurant and Kelly went different place, but we observed same group.
Post a Comment
<< Home