In his article "Knowing Fieldwork," Titon explores the issue of epistemology in ethnomusicology, or, more simply stated, what ethnomusicological knowledge consists of and how it is acquired and understood. He defines two different kinds of "knowing," explaining and understanding. The latter, with its emphasis on subjective human experience rather than the formulation of natural laws, is what he argues contemporary methods in ethnomusicology and fieldwork seek to accomplish. He refers to this modern ethnomusicological paradigm as the "study of people making music." Following these methods, knowledge is accessed phenomenologically, that is through the consciousness of the ethnographer as he or she experiences music. Titon adds that this knowledge can be presented in a number of ways, including narrative, film, and multimedia. In his postscript, he discusses friendships that arise from the process of making music and participant-observation. Two types of friendship, instrumental friendship -- in which there is a mutual, material benefit for each party -- and friendship based on mutual admiration and a shared musical experience, result from fieldwork and also affect the nature of knowledge acquired from fieldwork.
Discussion question: What does Titon's phenomenological sort of understanding actually allow us to know? Is it possible to translate an individual's experience into language and then for an outsider to glean meaning from it? Does this approach solve the "crisis of representation?" Does it result in other crises, perhaps even one's more serious than those it sets out to resolve?
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