Interactions and partnerships in fieldwork: Ethnomusicology, Ethnopoetics and oral literature

Abstract

Among research areas related and adjacent to Oral Literature, Ethnomusicology and Ethnopoetics deserve special attention. In these disciplines, socioanthropological approach joins aesthetical sensibility. The analytical postures vary from claiming for strict objectivity to postulating subjective hermeneutics. Therefore, and particularly when the research proceedings include fieldwork and ethnography, we often have to deal with ethic, social, emotional and episthemological problems arisen from relationship between ethnographer and ethnographed. The scholar’s attitude facing the object/subject he intends to study, and the interaction befalling between both of them, all of that influence the manner of investigative approach as well as the style of discourses produced by investigation. In collection, transcription and translation of verbal art repertories, the topic of performance stands out nowadays; consequently, the informer’s role becomes more important and the fieldwork more complex. Based on ethnomusicological and ethnopoetical references, this article discusses the questions above, in order to inspirate a reflexion about pathes and options of modern research on Oral Literatures.