Phillip Vannini on The Ethnography of Music

What do you mean by an ethnographic approach to music?

There are many different social scientific methods to research music. There are approaches that focus on historical dynamics, others that focus on the semiotic (either lyrics or sound structures) components of songs, and others that focus on what people do with music and how they interact with music and with one another with regard to music. The latter is called ethnography. It is a research tradition – typical of anthropology and related fields – used to write about people’s ways of life. Of course it’s not just used for the study of music, but within this context it works particularly well because of its elegance and simplicity in revealing the everyday life dimensions of musical production and consumption. Imagine going to a concert. What would you do there? You would watch the show, listen to the music, sing along, cheer, interact with friends, and all that jazz, right? Well, you couldn’t get a sense of all that by way of historical or semiotic analysis. Ethnography is about being where the action is, and taking part in it. That level of participation, combined with observation, when repeated over and over, allows you to scrutinise what people take for granted.

On to your first book: what does Tia DeNora argue in Music in Everyday Life?

DeNora makes an incredibly simple, but incredibly compelling argument: within the domain of everyday life we utilise music as a technology. We do not always do so in an overly rational way, of course, but for the most part we act towards music in light of what it does for us. On the basis of a lot of interviews about how people listen to music DeNora finds that music is a technology of the self, a set of tools and techniques, which we utilise, for example, to work out harder at the gym, clean up floors to, or set the tone for a date. DeNora’s focus in especially on how music is used to mould our emotional states, or to play into them. I think anyone can relate to that. Can anyone bear listening to Phil Collins while they’re trying to pump some iron at the gym?

She argues that music plays an important role in shaping human behaviour. How does music affect the way we behave in society today?

One of the most interesting ideas that arise out of her work is the strategic use of music to set or modify emotions. Music, in this sense, is used as a means to an end – whereas traditionally, as a form of art, music ought to be made and consumed for its own sake. What that means is that we now have an incredible amount of choice of music made and consumed for a specific purpose. Take for example workout music: it has become a genre in its own right.

Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience looks at the effect of personal music devices on the people who use them. Tell me about the book.

Michael Bull is a very influential writer in a new field called sensory studies. Scholars of sensory studies examine the social and cultural aspects of the human senses and sensations. Here the study of music takes a very strong embodied turn. This book, in a way, is thus less about music and more about aurality and hearing. This book is a classic in this field, especially because of the remarkably contemporary topic. Bull’s argument and findings – again based on ethnographic research – point to the ways in which people create personalised urban soundscapes through their portable music players. The city, in this sense, becomes a very unique soundscape that each of us can choose.

Is it a good thing that iPods allow us to escape our immediate reality into the world of music any time we choose?

I am incredibly old fashioned about these things. Personally, I always like to tune into the soundscape as it comes, rather than craft one of my own. To a great degree it has to do with where I live. I live on a very small island, populated by few people who tend to live quite apart from one another. With the exception of the occasional seaplane humming over my head or the ferry horn when the boat leaves, all the noises I hear on a daily basis are natural: birds, the winds, and things like that. So when I go to a city I like to feel like I’m escaping. It’s an adventure, really. I wonder if I’m going to last the day in Vancouver – or some other metropolis – or if my ears are going to blast before I’m due to go back home to my soundscape heaven. So what I’m trying to say is that whether I love it or hate the soundscape that I’m in is always fascinating to me.

Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital looks at the cultures which emerge around music. Tell me about Sarah Thornton’s argument.

The key argument here revolves around the concept of subcultural capital. Thornton examines the insiders of a much maligned scene: the dance scene. Ethnography pays attention to insiders, and it does so by asking something unique from the researcher: to view the world from the perspective of those she is studying. In doing so Thornton finds that insiders to these scenes share a meaningful taste culture – regardless of what others think of it.