ABSTRACT
Ethnomusicologists often wish to gain in-depth cultural understandings during ethnographic participant-observations of musical events and activities. The possibilities that ethnography affords are even further extended in musical performance. Performance ethnography means students' direct participation in performance so as to write about people's rich and intertwined experiences through participating and observing, and experiencing for themselves people's engagement in music. Through performance and critical reflection, students are able to describe how and why individuals and cultures value artistic products in often unique and differing ways. However, the concern of this brief chapter will be students' self-reflexive accounts on their performance experiences and fellow feelings, rather than an analysis of their written ethnographies. It briefly illustrate the ways in which students learnt about the beliefs and values that people held and expressed through their own music. The chapter shows how artistic understanding became closely tied to cultural understanding through the epistemological status of students' own artistic experiences.
