The COVID-19 pandemic demands a re-examination of the ethics and practicality of research that relies on in-person interaction. After eight months of a planned year of on-site dissertation fieldwork researching the musical life of Toyama City, Japan, I returned to the US at the end of March 2020 due to the pandemic. I continued to correspond with local contacts, but even within a single city, not all are evenly connected online. I began carefully analyzing online materials to supplement my prior in-person experience and ongoing correspondence. Interpreting such media, representing different groups, demands careful attention to its varying production and engagement contexts. Furthermore, recordings and other online materials differ from the events they represent. In spite of these limitations, researchers already familiar with the events depicted may be able to tease out subtle clues indicating local sentiment, even from afar. In this article, I conduct a close reading of two videos posted on YouTube in 2021 as the pandemic continued to impact public music making in Toyama City: (1) a message and musical performance from chindon-ya performers scheduled to appear at the cancelled 2020 and 2021 National Chindon Competition in Toyama City and (2) a video of a lion dance performed as part of the 2021 Yatsuo Hikiyama Festival, which resumed in 2021 following its cancellation in 2020. This analysis demonstrates the potentials and limitations of ethnographically informed close reading and explores how prior in-person experiences with musical communities might inform subsequent close readings of online media depicting those communities.
{"title":"Music and Sound in Toyama City Up-close and from Afar: A Close Reading of Online Materials Informed by In-person Experience","authors":"W. D. Scally","doi":"10.59998/2023-12-1-1317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59998/2023-12-1-1317","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic demands a re-examination of the ethics and practicality of research that relies on in-person interaction. After eight months of a planned year of on-site dissertation fieldwork researching the musical life of Toyama City, Japan, I returned to the US at the end of March 2020 due to the pandemic. I continued to correspond with local contacts, but even within a single city, not all are evenly connected online. I began carefully analyzing online materials to supplement my prior in-person experience and ongoing correspondence. Interpreting such media, representing different groups, demands careful attention to its varying production and engagement contexts. Furthermore, recordings and other online materials differ from the events they represent. In spite of these limitations, researchers already familiar with the events depicted may be able to tease out subtle clues indicating local sentiment, even from afar. In this article, I conduct a close reading of two videos posted on YouTube in 2021 as the pandemic continued to impact public music making in Toyama City: (1) a message and musical performance from chindon-ya performers scheduled to appear at the cancelled 2020 and 2021 National Chindon Competition in Toyama City and (2) a video of a lion dance performed as part of the 2021 Yatsuo Hikiyama Festival, which resumed in 2021 following its cancellation in 2020. This analysis demonstrates the potentials and limitations of ethnographically informed close reading and explores how prior in-person experiences with musical communities might inform subsequent close readings of online media depicting those communities.","PeriodicalId":413815,"journal":{"name":"the world of music (new series)","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130049388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay centers on the sound- and music-based methodologies of the Marshallese Educational Initiative (MEI) in terms of “community-driven research” that began in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when the virus was taking a massive toll on the community. The MEI is a nonprofit based in Springdale, Arkansas, which is home to the largest diasporic Marshallese community in the continental US. The first part analyzes the MEI’s COVID-19 informational materials on their website from an audiovisual perspective. Although mitigating the day-to-day consequences of COVID-19 took a necessary priority, the MEI educational programmers were determined to examine the long-term consequences of social distancing (as community disenfranchisement) in a transpacific context and the negative media representation of Marshallese regarding COVID-19 cases. Consequently, they came up with a project called “Songs of Our Atolls,” that would facilitate intergenerational communication and combat negative stereotyping. The second part explores the “Songs” project from its inception to grant application to realization through the activism of Marshallese youth musicians (MARK Harmony). Based on interviews and my remote participation, I examine the studio-based outreach to elders through which the band engaged in conversations and intergenerational learning (through songs) in ways that maintained social proximity while keeping physical distance in culturally appropriate ways. The third part offers a critical assessment of potential directions for the “Songs” project, including bidirectional learning, that dovetails with part one of the essay, whereby the band would work on collaborative public service announcements with other youths and elders, which is a method inspired by Youth to Youth in Health (an organization in the Marshall Islands). My conclusion sums up the ethical importance of paying attention to sound and music in terms of communal health and situating these transpacific forms of culturally appropriate information dissemination and intergenerational learning in the broader diaspora.
{"title":"“Music as Method” in Marshallese Community-driven Research and Outreach during the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Jessica A. Schwartz","doi":"10.59998/2023-12-1-1315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.59998/2023-12-1-1315","url":null,"abstract":"This essay centers on the sound- and music-based methodologies of the Marshallese Educational Initiative (MEI) in terms of “community-driven research” that began in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when the virus was taking a massive toll on the community. The MEI is a nonprofit based in Springdale, Arkansas, which is home to the largest diasporic Marshallese community in the continental US. The first part analyzes the MEI’s COVID-19 informational materials on their website from an audiovisual perspective. Although mitigating the day-to-day consequences of COVID-19 took a necessary priority, the MEI educational programmers were determined to examine the long-term consequences of social distancing (as community disenfranchisement) in a transpacific context and the negative media representation of Marshallese regarding COVID-19 cases. Consequently, they came up with a project called “Songs of Our Atolls,” that would facilitate intergenerational communication and combat negative stereotyping. The second part explores the “Songs” project from its inception to grant application to realization through the activism of Marshallese youth musicians (MARK Harmony). Based on interviews and my remote participation, I examine the studio-based outreach to elders through which the band engaged in conversations and intergenerational learning (through songs) in ways that maintained social proximity while keeping physical distance in culturally appropriate ways. The third part offers a critical assessment of potential directions for the “Songs” project, including bidirectional learning, that dovetails with part one of the essay, whereby the band would work on collaborative public service announcements with other youths and elders, which is a method inspired by Youth to Youth in Health (an organization in the Marshall Islands). My conclusion sums up the ethical importance of paying attention to sound and music in terms of communal health and situating these transpacific forms of culturally appropriate information dissemination and intergenerational learning in the broader diaspora.","PeriodicalId":413815,"journal":{"name":"the world of music (new series)","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122540097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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