Working with tradition: towards a partnership model of fieldwork

This account is reminiscent of Paul Berliner's transcendent fieldwork moment, in which an understanding of the tuning system of the mbira was suddenly revealed to him by one particular associate, with whom he had built up a special relationship based on mutual trust, after six years of field trips to Africa (Berliner 1978, 7).

Ethel Dawson's donation of the Mount-Dawson manuscripts, as a consequence of the fostering of good relationships during my fieldwork, enabled me to engage in reciprocation by editing them for publication (see Appendix). The manuscript books, formerly belonging to members of the "Big Set" carol party, provided the key to the instrumental parts created to accompany the carols. This information had not previously been known, as the available piano scores were merely redactions of the vocal parts. The knowledge the manuscripts unlocked was invaluable and helped to fuel the Festivals of Village Carols, as well as acting as a resource for other carol singing events. This was reflected in the weekly gatherings in Grenoside (at the Old Red Lion or Cow and Calf) convened by Ray Ellison, who leads a group of string accompanists. Moreover, the music contained in the manuscripts provided a unique insight into the performance style of village bands, such as the "Big Set." It does not simply provide an outline of the notes, as might be expected, but details the patterning and embellishments that distinguished and characterised the performance of such groups. This level of information had not previously been available to scholarship or to local carolling groups.

Thus, engaging in reciprocity not only makes for good practice on the part of the fieldworker, but can also help to provide the key to a greater understanding of the material collected.

Ethnography and Allegory

In Clifford's own contribution to Writing Culture (1986, 98-121), he argues that ethnographies are allegorical at two levels of meaning--the presentation of information about a culture, and the understanding and interpretation of that culture. In his usage, allegory denotes "a propensity to generate another story in the mind of its reader" (Clifford 1986, 100), a story or meaning, it should be added, beyond the control of the ethnographer. A review of the emerging Village Carols series of sound recordings that appeared in the Journal of American Folklore, in 1994, described them perceptively as, "a potentially valuable instructional resource," thereby identifying their importance in a pedagogic context, a usage which had not been envisaged at the time of their production (Ashton 1994, 418).

It came as a pleasant surprise to learn that in the Ottawa Valley in Canada, a group of singers led by the folklore scholar Shelley Posen had started their own carol singing tradition in a pub in 1990, using the South Yorkshire tradition as their paradigm. Posen's acknowledgement of this derivation is stated, and exemplifies the allegorical potential of the ethnographies (Posen 2001, vi). The Ottawa movement, with its several hundred followers, is not a reconstruction or a revival no more than it is an imitation or a clone. It can be understood in terms of its diasporic qualities as a cultural outport with an emerging identity of its own. Posen emphasises the organic nature of the movement by describing it as a 'transplant." [19] How the Canadian phenomenon relates to its English counterparts is a source of fascination for the Yorkshire carollers, who regard it a tribute to the qualities of their carolling tradition that Canadians should want to emulate it. If the phenomenon is interpreted as an act of reciprocity, it is an unanticipated consequence of the action of producing ethnographies of the carolling traditions, thereby demonstrating in Clifford's terms allegorical meaning with unpredicted results. Thus the Canadians looked to the ethnographies as teaching tools to (re-)create a music, with which they found resonance and which helped them to express their identity.