’I fyra år levde jag tillsammans med en annan man.’

Några tankar kring konsten att skriva om enstaka musiker

Abstract

‘For Four Years I Lived Together with Another Man.’ Studying Individual Musicians
The article discusses ethnomusicological studies of individual musicians or singers, more specific the relation between the author and his/her object. This relation is rarely described in the printed texts, although it is central for both the scholar and the text. Literature about individual musicians, in art music as well as in folk music, can be divided into three categories. The first consists of biographies, recognized by their chronological form. The second deals with “the musician and his/her time” and therefore has a wider purpose than the pure biographies. Studies belonging to the third category have stronger connections to scientific perspectives and take their departures in specific questions that the authors should solve. Normally, work of this kind has an emotional background. The scholar “discovers” some music and its musicians, and wants to write about it. With this starting point the object is always an excellent musician or singer, not a mediocre or a “typical” one. In an ethnomusicological study, the object does not need to be a wellrespected artist, although he or she performs good music. But the investigation itself affects the musician’s status and gives him or her a special position in the local society. With an emotional departure the author easily can identify himself/herself with his/her object. This identification can increase the quality of the text, as the author is involved in the music. Also, it can result in a decreased ability to trace negative sides of the objects and his/her music and to have a necessary distance to the musician in question. Further, the author has to choose between three perspectives on the object:
1. the object’s own view upon him/herself – which is often used in anthropological studies,
2. the outsider’s view from the time of the object – often used because of the source situation,
3. the contemporary view upon the object – practically inevitable.
Normally, the author uses a mixture of perspectives. To conclude, some problems in studies of individual musicians are ethical, while others are connected to methodological issues. A characteristic trait for this scientific genre is probably the close connection between these two fields.