Participate, observe, investigate: the method as a process

Abstract

The term method is widespread, both in academic contexts and in different musical areas, institutional or otherwise. However, most of the time, this term expresses different, even opposite meanings. In this article I try to reflect on these different meanings, establishing some criteria and parameters that I consider relevant, especially for research that has music as an object of analysis. Beyond proposing a specific method for music research, my goal is to clarify what it means to act based on method. Hence, I examine the existing relationships between knowledge, action and performance, in the construction of a pathway that involves practice, movement, and process, as powerful methodological resources. In the case of the ethnographic method, perhaps the most appropriate way to reflect on this subject –especially when we understand it as practice– is to let it reveal itself through a description, a report. Thus, throughout the article, I report some of my experiences as a musician-researcher, in search of this participatory-observer pathway.