British Forum for Ethnomusicology Online Autumn Conference 2024 (hosted by the University of Southampton): ‘Creative Writing, Music and Ethnography’

Report by Hettie Malcomson (University of Southampton; conference convenor)

Autumn 2024 is marked by war, climate disaster, and crises in the academic world: funding cuts, departments being closed, battles about what constitutes valuable knowledge. It is increasingly clear that knowledge is not enough to change people's views about the world. Conventional academic writing is hard to read; barely read. Yet, stories … stories are creative, fun, sensory, emotional. Stories move people, bring hope. Writing creatively can help us, academics, communicate knowledge to academic communities, to other audiences, in ways that can be heard. 

This BFE Autumn conference focused on aesthetic, epistemological, methodological and phenomenological and ethical issues that experimental writing engenders in musicological and ethnographic texts. As convenor, I introduced the conference, pointing to significant milestones in the history of experimental ethnographic writing – Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men (1935); the "literary turn" of the 1980s and 1990s, which questioned boundaries between objectivity and subjectivity, reality and fiction; work exploring embodied experience, and form. Since then, awareness of positionality and power has increased, and privileged scholars generally do less ‘naval-gazing’. Of note, is how many researchers who have experimented with forms of representation are people of colour, particularly Black women, older white women, queer folks, and/or people working in violent contexts.

The conference included three panels: the first two papers were cancelled at the last minute, so instead participants wrote and spoke about aged and musical sensory experiences. Then Yusheng Lei sonic ethnographied in Xi’an, reflecting on sensory loss and field-noting to reimagine urban historiography and ethnographic writing. Steve Wilford moved us with his autoethnographic writings on grief and his Romani heritage. Jiaxi Xie zoomed in from the Thai-Burmese border to share fragments of research on music and war. Gunseli Naz Ferel Ucar soundscaped an experimental composition, incorporating field recordings and autoethnographic writings interrogating affect in Istanbul's electronic dance music scene. Thomas Hilder storied on vulnerability and LGBTQ+ choral activism, exploring voice, positionality, and queer politics. Samantha Sebastian uttered analytical transcriptions to analyse the embodied and material qualities of voice in intercultural choral settings. Joe Browning guided us along a mountain path, sharing intersubjective possibilities of walking and listening; eco-art, embodiment and affect. Discussions were rich: thought and soul provoking.

Led by BFE Chair, Fiorella Montero Diaz, we then all came together to chew over how writing creatively can challenge and complement conventional academic writing. Five-minute interventions were offered by Sean Williams around poetry and ethnography; me, Hettie, on point of view in ethnographic writing; Liz Gre, who conjured their experimentation with ‘endarkened storywork’ and composition;  Richard Wolf, who explicated how his writing on dream emerged; and Amanda Hsieh, who shared centring dialogue when curating reviews. A really rich discussion ensued, moving from apotropaic magic to critical forms of empathy to ‘slap’ our audiences.

The online format facilitated a mix of 171 Masters and PhD students, early-career researchers, and more experienced scholars from 28 countries to register for the conference. 102 people attended, spanning several time zones, and there were around 50 participants at any one time throughout the day. Despite some technical glitches, feedback was positive, with participants expressing gratitude for the opportunity to share work in a supportive, thought-provoking and trusted environment.

The conference was co-organised by Cassandre Balosso-Bardin (KU Leuven), the BFE’s current Conference Liaison Officer, and I, and the programming committee consisted of: Cassandre Balosso-Bardin, Erin Johnson-Williams (University of Southampton), Liz Gre (University of Southampton), Lea Hagmann (University of Bern) and Stina Homer (Open University) and me. Support was provided by Morgan Davies (BFE), Peter Underwood (BFE) and Fernanda Muñoz Salazar (University of Southampton). A massive thanks to all for another fabulous BFE event!