Autobiographical ethnography is a genre of autobiography that connects individuals to culture, society and politics. Autobiographical ethnographic works are usually written in the first person and appear in a variety of creative forms. Examples include short stories, musical compositions, poetry, photographic essays and reflective journals. Musical autoethnography explores the intersection of autoethnographic methods and music studies.
My work also falls under the Autoethnography concept, as I will be using my own field recordings to modify and mix. And these recordings will be of subjects that are more personal to me. The Autoethnography concept of working in the first person is also a new idea for me, as I may be able to do monologues or some first-person style for my audio.
I also examined this collection of articles, and in the first section, “Songwriting and Improvisation,” the authors explore how the process of songwriting and improvisation can be used as a powerful autoethnographic tool for storytelling and reflecting on significant life experiences. In the second section, “Interpretation and Performance”, the diversity of experiences that musicians face in singing and interpreting musical works is emphasized. The diversity of experiences faced by musicians in singing, interpreting musical works, acquiring musical skills, and losing the ability to play music due to injury. The third section, ‘Learning and Teaching’, provides autoethnographic descriptions of learning music in three different cultural and pedagogical contexts, including Bali, Southern China, and Western conservatory settings. In the fourth section, ‘Researching Identity and Transdifferentiated Contexts’, the authors use autoethnography as a means of describing and reflecting on their experiences of researching in a number of musical and cultural contexts.