Re-experiencing Home through Ethnomusicology: How Fieldwork Challenges the

Autobiographical Memory of a Place

Author: Luca Gambirasio (University College Cork)

Source: SEM Student News 18.1 “Fieldwork and Identity” (Fall/Winter 2022)
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Published by the Society for Ethnomusicology
ISSN: 2578-4242

This article is a short autoethnographic reflection on the shift in my perception of a familiar place
that I experienced while traveling around the provinces of Pisa and Livorno in Tuscany, Italy, in
order to conduct preliminary fieldwork for my PhD research. Ethnography is a “slice of reality”
that is influenced by personal perspectives and experiences (Stock 2001, 13) and it is influenced
by our autobiographical memory system, which includes the combination of episodic memories,
memories about objects, people, and places, general knowledge about the world (Williams et al.
2008) as well as one’s self-image, life story, beliefs, values, and attitudes (Conway 2012).

I moved to Ireland in September 2020 to start an MA in Ethnomusicology, which I successfully

concluded the year after, and in January 2022, I started my PhD in the same institution. My
research explores how new music and sound are at the base of local practices of re-connection
with the environment, without addressing any specific environmental issues, but instead
investigating models to address the so-called crisis of culture at the base of the current
environmental crisis (Allen 2011; Devall 1985). This includes participant observation in events
organized by cultural non-profit organizations and independent musicians that operate in the
area, including music and sound based practices with an environmentalist agenda. This research
aims to build the basis of future applied work within the European Union, especially considering
ethnomusicologists’ ability to address cultural issues and generate meaning in human culture
(Rice 2014), particularly in a “time of environmental crisis“ (Titon 2013).

In April 2022, I received a phone call from a cultural worker based in my fieldwork location,
who referred to me as the researcher. This person lives in a village close to the place where I
spent some of my childhood. This is a village where I played, worked, loved, and laughed, and,
altogether with other locations that I visited during this field trip, a place that somehow is an
“ingredient of [my] self” (Knez 2006, 374). I realized then that I was approaching a familiar
place under a different role, and that I was not just being seen as myself, but for the first time, I
was seen and greeted as the researcher. After I landed in Italy in August I had more experiences
that made me reflect on my shifting role and how people behaved with me, with and without
consideration of my professional persona.

The contrast between insider and outsider has been deeply explored in ethnomusicology (Burnim

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1985, Agawu 2003, Nettl 2005, among many others), and although some scholars have tried to
define the phases between the two (Ssempijja 2012), we cannot risk reducing fieldwork to “a
single valency or position” (Stock and Chiener 2008, 113), considering the multiplicity of roles
and identities that we ethnomusicologists undertake in the field, roles that sometimes shift
according to our temporary agency (Wong 2008). The ambivalence of my role during this
research is similar to that described in Mellonee Burnim’s account of gospel music (1985): for
this research I am an insider, as I share language, culture, and local knowledge with my research
participants, but at the same time I am an outsider, considering my agenda as doctoral researcher
coming from a foreign institution. My research in this place is influenced by my past experiences
and acquaintances. One of the advantages of doing fieldwork at home is in fact to “already have
positive relationships” (Gillian and Fenn 2019, 17), meaning that the ethnographer at home often
does not need to spend an extended time in building a network of places, events, people, and
music (Stock and Chiener 2008) for their fieldwork, as they can often rely on previous
knowledge gathered during the various experiences of their life.

On a sunny and hot summer afternoon, I phoned the president of a local cultural non-profit
organization. On that evening they were running an event aimed at the appreciation of a natural
area in Castagneto Carducci, which included music, as part of a project funded by the European
Government. The event was reservation-only, and it was sold out. Once I mentioned to the
organizer that I was interested in joining and observing, she happily accepted. I remember
mentioning exactly the nature of my interest, stating: “I am an ethnomusicologist.”

The event ended with a musical activity performed by a local musician with the participation of
the audience. After the music, I approached the organizers and the musician, asking questions
about the main project, the parts involved, and their hopes and plans for the future. I then
approached the musician involved, asking her for an interview on another day, to better
understand the details of her musical practice. She invited me to her house in a village one hour
away, where she welcomed me. But when she took me into her kitchen, she seemed hesitant.
While the word ethnomusicologist had been well accepted by the event organizers, in this setting
it brought a combination of curiosity and diffidence. Being both active musicians in the area, we
knew each other by name but had never been acquainted before. She looked nervously at the
Zoom recorder on the table, asking how the recording would be used and suddenly becoming
more formal in the description of her work. I tried to reassure her that no information would be
used without her consent, and that she would get to review the interview transcript to agree
together on what would and would not be used.

Empathy is the process of comprehending and experiencing another person’s affective state,
including (a) affective response to another person; (b) the cognitive capacity to take that person’s
perspective, and (c) emotion regulation (Decety and Jackson 2006). To me, a musician and
ethnomusicologist, the word empathy lives alongside non-judgemental listening, to understand
other people’s perspectives, showing acknowledgement, compassion, and genuine interest in
whatever the other person says and does. For the whole hour of the interview, I showed empathy
about her work, as I wanted to show her that I was not just doing research, but that I was
genuinely interested in her practice, and that I was a musician myself, moved by the same sense
of advocacy and need to use my skills for a positive change in my community. Slowly, she
opened up, eventually stating that she was unsure about how much she could share with me

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initially, but decided to open up after she perceived some signs of empathy and emotional
sensitivity from my side.

The following weekend I presented the sound installation at the above-mentioned exhibition.
This was the first time that I ever did anything like this, and it happened in Castellina, the village
that I previously mentioned, just a few kilometers of distance from where I spent part of my
childhood and adulthood—a place that I have always perceived negatively in terms of work
opportunities, considering my past struggles in finding any occupation in the area. Interestingly, I
was welcomed there as the artist/researcher who came from abroad to participate in this event,
and the organizers and other participating artists engaged with me by showing respect and
curiosity. As individuals, we are used to relying on our autobiographical memories, as they serve
to give the self its social position and to determine a continuity between past, present, and future
(Neisser 1988). They guide our behaviors, helping us in solving problems (Cohen 1989),
retrieving pieces of knowledge from our experience in order to reach a goal (Conway and
Pleydell-Pearce 2000). Autobiographical memories also influence our approach to places: two
individuals can have completely different feelings and experiences in the same place according
to their past experiences and base knowledge (Knez 2006).

The formal distance with collaborators and research participants decayed quickly once I
demonstrated my “insidership” to my new friends and colleagues, showing them my familiarity
with places, people, institutions, and issues in the area – retrieving information for my memory
in relation to that place. Soon enough I was regarded just as a local with a particular agenda, and
my value was determined by my own actions and words, as well as my sympathy for the beings
surrounding me. I was again one of them, swinging between my roles and positions, and
experiencing familiar people and places in a different way, in contrast with my past experiences,
opening the door to new connections, positive moments, and work perspectives.

These episodes made me reflect on some interrogatives. Am I a different person, experiencing

the place where I grew up differently, or am I just performing a different persona (and therefore
enabling different responses)? Is it just my agenda that changed or that the study of
ethnomusicology has provided me with a different set of social tools to navigate differently a
place already known to me? Living the experiences mentioned in this article I really felt I entered
my “character of fire” (Kaufman Shelemay 2020, 8) as I first stepped into the field, and this
feeling was enhanced by the contrast with the memories and knowledge I previously gathered
about the region I call home. Surely, the path of self-work that I undertook besides my job has
influenced my experience and these people’s reactions. Practicing fundamental skills like
kindness, compassion, and empathy definitely improves our experience as human beings. As
ethnomusicologists, our work consists in listening—a skill often associated with empathy. What
if we apply all these qualities together, to our work and our lives, similarly to Joshua Pilzer’s
personal definition of ethnomusicology as to encounter the world musically (2021, 452)? Surely
our work will benefit from such an approach, and our relationships with people in and out of the
field—and with the field itself—will benefit from it too.

Doing fieldwork at home is a life choice that reflects all these memories and thoughts described
above. Jonathan Stock and Chou Chiener recall the late John Blacking pointing out that, for
whoever conducts fieldwork at home: “ethnomusicology [is] a way to move back from focusing

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on musical” —and for me, also social and cultural—“specifics that were already deeply familiar,
a means of envisioning broader concerns, musical and human alike” (Stock and Chiener 2008,
109). Ethnomusicological fieldwork at home is then an opportunity to re-create the
autobiographical knowledge of a familiar place and ultimately to observe home with new eyes,
and to listen to it with an open heart.

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