To voice´, to sing, to tell. Methodological drifts of an artistic and autoetnographic research

Abstract

In this article I will take up some methodological reflections arising during the process of writing my doctoral thesis, whose subject is the construction of vocalidades and corporalities singers of popular music of the city of La Plata (capital of the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina). I will develop a set of reflections on the tools and strategies that chose as a methodological way for my research. From my dual role in the field as an anthropologist and folk singer, I opted for the inclusion of autoetnográficas tools in fieldwork, while situé art as a human dimension producer of knowledge. Being an ethnography at the same time challenges me as a native, my challenge has been thinking a methodology that bridges between what science enables, or how to practice from the social anthropology of the body and from the ethnography and what It produces art-or artistic research such as we think. We understand science and art as fields of research and experimentation that form two modes of producing knowledge, which can converse fluently, not without tensions, but tending to the highest possible level playing field. In this context, autoethnography was helpful to inhabit two practices and critically reflective of my art making at the same time are body, hermeneutical and conceptual: teaching singing and singing popular music. We think the autoethnographic methodology as a vehicle for raising such information as well as the power recirculation artistic and ethnographic knowledge has had on the composition of my work´s drifts.