Researching Music- and Place-Making Through Engaged Practice: Becoming a Musicking-Geographer

Abstract

How might geographers better understand the active, lived, on-the-ground experiences of musicians in places, and their role in place-making? As a professional musical practitioner, I bring to geography the perspective of a musicking-geographer, drawing on Christopher Small’s (2011) concept of “musicking,” and Harriet Hawkins’ (2011) work on geographic-artistic “doing.” To examine the co-constitutive processes of music-making and place-making, this paper describes how I have developed a new research framework that brings together two methodological approaches: musicking ethnography, and music mapping. I consider how my approach has developed in response to my aspiration to working with musicians of all age groups, musical backgrounds and interests from across the amateur-professional continuum, and to create egalitarian, engaging, respectful and useful research experiences for the musicians with whom I work. I also discuss how my dual-positionality framed my work, and how these methods might be further developed and adapted by practitioner-geographers.

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