Experience, reflexivity and fieldwork

Analysis of a relationship with traditional music

Abstract

In the present work I analyze the relationship that, as a student of musical practices, I established with my object of study, and the way in which such a relationship -constructed by listening to ethnomusicological field recordings and recordings of the New Latin American Song- determined the choice of my objects of study, the ways of constructing and analyzing them. This relationship was observed in the fieldwork carried out among the Huaves of San Mateo del Mar (Oaxaca), and in the way in which I articulated this experience with other instances of ethnomusicological work: analysis of the data collected, writing and communication of results of investigation. The abstraction of the subject of the study was the approach used to analyze the experience and "the subjective relationship [of the knowing subject] with the object [of study]" (Bourdieu 2001: 182-183); as well as "the social conditions of possibility [...] of that experience and [...] of the act of objectification" (Bourdieu 2003: 44). Thanks to this exercise, I locate some of the epistemological and historical-social determinations of ethnomusicology in Mexico, a disciplinary field in which I was placed. This exercise allows us to conclude that the analysis of the determinations that guide the relationships that we engage with our study objects enable more reflective professional praxis.