Critical Review #2

Critical Review #2

Chapter 6- Barz and Cooley

 

I had never truly considered the Internet, or “virtual fieldwork,” to be as legitimate as traditional, personal, immersion within a culture’s music. However, Cooley, Meizel, and Syed’s accounts of virtual fieldwork as a primary source opened my eyes to something that I had previously been less informed of.  Virtual fieldwork does what traditional transcription does; it turns the past into a present reality.  Looking at YouTube videos and listening to old recordings allows us to witness “performing musicians when they are not present in person.” (91) As a result, we need not purely rely on music that is being conceived right in front of our eyes, but rather can allow this other mode of transmission (ie, the internet, old recordings, etc.) to bring the past to us; a movie or sound clip can be re-lived just by pressing the play button. If anything, a re-lived performance takes that “musical community” and makes it ever-present. 

Katharine Meizel’s experience in research American Idol is particularly intriguing in connecting it to the notion of virtual fieldwork.  As a television show that relies heavily on audience reaction and involvement, American Idol has taken the notion of making the past present one step further. Now, we see what music is performed on television and we therefore become the controllers of whether or not that music is something that we will continue to listen to. If anything, we, the viewers, can take what we see in the present and preserve it to be a part of our normal, day-to-day musical enjoyment. Furthermore, American Idol becomes a collective decision, something that communities can enjoy and decide on together. This only furthers the notion that music does not solely rely on notes on a page or mastery of performance, but also how that music becomes a part of a community. As a result, the acts of watching, listening to, and voting on these musical performances allow music to shape and become a part of a community identity.