Researching Music- and Place-Making Through Engaged Practice: Becoming a Musicking-Geographer^*

* This research is funded by the Irish Research Council (GOIPG/2016/405). Thank you to Prof Karen Till, Prof Gerry Kearns, Rachel McArdle, Lorna O’Hara, Joe Robinson, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and insights on earlier drafts of this article.

ABSTRACT

How might geographers better understand the active, lived, on-the-ground experiences of musicians in places, and their role in place-making? As a professional musical practitioner, I bring to geography the perspective of a musicking-geographer, drawing on Christopher Small’s (2011) concept of “musicking,” and Harriet Hawkins’ (2011) work on geographic-artistic “doing.” To examine the co-constitutive processes of music-making and place-making, this paper describes how I have developed a new research framework that brings together two methodological approaches: musicking ethnography, and music mapping. I consider how my approach has developed in response to my aspiration to working with musicians of all age groups, musical backgrounds and interests from across the amateur-professional continuum, and to create egalitarian, engaging, respectful and useful research experiences for the musicians with whom I work. I also discuss how my dual-positionality framed my work, and how these methods might be further developed and adapted by practitioner-geographers.

Keywords:

• Place
• music
• art
• practice
• creativity