I spent a year carrying out fieldwork in Medellín (2017–18), with a two-week reconnaissance trip in 2016 and a two-week follow-up in 2019. For several months, I was assisted by my wife, D.13 As a native Spanish speaker who both trained and taught in a Latin American SATM program, D. is an insider to this culture. This allowed her to make an instant connection with staff and students in the Red. Her participation greatly enriched the research, providing a distinctive perspective that allowed for triangulation with my own and frequently enabling observation in two places at once. During this time, I focused on the decision-making processes and responses among leaders and senior staff, while D. spent more time with students and teachers. The
13 The decision to remain anonymous is hers.
29 Introduction
students’ voices are cited less frequently in this book, because of its focus on adult-led processes of change, but they were very much part of our observations and conversations.
Long-term ethnographic fieldwork is an appropriate method for exploring the complexities and tensions of SATM in real life, beyond idealistic visions and mission statements. Fieldwork may serve as a reality check, slowly revealing the practice behind the theory, warts and all. Anderson (2011) and Mosse (2004) argue for the importance of ethnography for testing taken-for-granted assumptions and assertions in educational and development contexts respectively. The American Buddhist teacher Charlotte Joko Beck (1995, 175) writes about what she calls “Zen bullshit,” or a tendency “to toss around many fancy concepts.” She goes on: “It’s not that the statements are false. […] But if we stop there, we have turned our practice into an exercise of concepts, and we’ve lost awareness of what’s going on.” Critical ethnography, too, might be thought of as an attempt to go beyond an exercise of concepts and beliefs, beyond “buzzwords and fuzzwords” (Cornwall and Eade 2010), and be aware of what is actually going on. Constant critical attention is required lest one fall into “music bullshit”—repeating slogans and fine-sounding claims that miss the complexities of what is taking place in front of one’s eyes.
Constant attention is also required because SATM programs and their contexts change over time. Consequently, their effects may also change. As Ramalingam (2013) points out, the fact that a particular action is effective in one place and time is no guarantee that it will work later or elsewhere. What worked in SATM in 1975 may no longer work in the 2020s; what worked in Venezuela may not work in the UK; in fact, what worked in one of the Red’s schools might not work in another.
At first sight, SATM may present an entirely rosy aspect, and in a brief conversation with a stranger, employees and students will generally focus on the positives. Idealistic discourses are deeply embedded in the field. Students grow up surrounded by particular conceptions of music—literally, in the case of the Red, where posters announced the official vision of the program on the walls of every school. When the two parties do not know each other, interviews and formal conversations may therefore simply reveal the extent to which dominant discourses have been imbibed. But in long-term fieldwork, as trust builds
30 Rethinking Social Action through Music
and the researcher starts to understand key issues and probe more deeply, interlocutors often begin to reveal other sides to the story and contradictory opinions. Many eventually show a mix of enthusiasm and reservations that is quite normal within large institutions. Ambiguity and ambivalence emerge, then, from building relationships and conversations over time.
Fieldwork also uncovers complexity and messiness. Some great ideas are realised partially or not at all. Some projects are artistic successes but social failures and vice versa. For external consumption, much of this detail vanishes as a cleaned-up, upbeat vision is conveyed. But if the ethnographer does their job properly, they will come to see other sides to the story.
However, ethnography has its limitations, which are particularly apparent when it is applied to a voluntary project, since it carries a strong risk of survivorship bias. Those who join a program like the Red or El Sistema are a self-selecting population to begin with, and with many students dropping out within the first couple of years and a steady attrition rate after that, concentrating on observations and interviews with current participants, particularly more proficient and articulate ones, means considering only a narrow group that is well-suited and adapted to the program. Those who are less enthusiastic normally leave and their voices disappear. The greater visibility of successes than failures can lead to excessive optimism on the part of the researcher—something apparent when comparing some interview- or observation-based writing on El Sistema with the almost imperceptible social effects identified by quantitative studies (e.g. Alemán et al. 2017;
Ilari et al. 2018). Without care, qualitative research on SATM can end up resembling a medical research trial that assesses the effectiveness of a cancer drug by interviewing the patients who are still alive five years after treatment. Unsurprisingly, it seems to work every time.
It is important to take the opinions of current participants and staff seriously, while at the same time remembering that they represent only the survivors. Fieldwork thus needs to be combined with other methods if it is not to present an overly restricted vision of a program and overstate its potential as a motor of social development. If ethnography usually focuses on those who survive, organizations that want to improve need to focus on those who do not. Researchers should bear in mind that the
31 Introduction
game of SATM has losers as well as winners, and many never even get the chance to play; research that focuses on the positive experiences of the winners could hardly be described as balanced or neutral, and it may offer little to the other two groups.
I adopted several strategies. Bell and Raffe (1991) argue that educational research on a specific project should also be comparative and historical, considering its relation to similar endeavours in the present and the past. (This is another area in which ethnographic studies of SATM have sometimes been weak.) I followed this route, drawing on my earlier research on El Sistema and Latin American music history.
Another was simply to be conscious of and interested in the problem.
Remembering that voices were missing made it easier to hear them. All current staff and students knew that participants dropped out, and they often knew why. It did not take much probing to see that the Red was not a program for everyone, raising questions about SATM’s central discourse of social inclusion.
I also spent a lot of time in meetings. Long meetings—up to eight hours long. Management meetings, staff meetings, school meetings, social team meetings. Academics usually regard research leave as a precious opportunity to escape from such activities, but I saw myself as very fortunate to be given permission to attend them, and they provided an invaluable space for understanding the internal dynamics of the program. My research revolved around change, so I seized the opportunity to observe the generation of new ideas and discussion of old problems in real time, rather than having to rely on interpretations filtered for my consumption in interviews. In meetings, some of the Red’s “ghosts”—figures and issues from the past—emerged from the shadows. A final strategy was to read a number of internal documents, provided to me by senior employees (past and present). These written sources brought into clearer focus the principal issues that had occupied the Red for many years, allowed absent voices to sound, and added another dimension to my observations.
The openness of the Red’s leaders was a research finding in its own right. I was somewhat astonished to find that general directors (past and present) not only spoke openly with me about problems and the need for change, but also gave me access to so many activities and materials.
I am not so naïve as to think that I heard and saw everything, but the
32 Rethinking Social Action through Music
contrast with the opacity of El Sistema’s higher reaches was striking, and it pointed to a fundamental difference of ethos between the programs.
Thanks to the Red’s openness, I spent much of my fieldwork year behind the scenes, witnessing the frictions and frank discussions beneath the surface of official positions and public statements. I often attended the weekly meeting of the management board, and I spent a lot of time with the social team, sometimes accompanying them on trips to schools and ensembles. As my fieldwork progressed, it took on an increasing element of participation and collaboration as well as observation. In meetings, I was regularly asked my opinion or drawn into collective discussions, and I made comments or suggestions when it seemed appropriate; many private conversations had an element of exchange rather than simply a one-way flow of information. As a foreign professor of music with extensive research experience, I was of interest to some staff, and they often bounced ideas off me or solicited my views.
This continual dialogue led the Red to offer me a consultancy position in 2018 (one that I was unfortunately unable to take up for contractual reasons). I also dusted off my clarinet and joined in workshops for teachers and students, and I took part in professional development seminars for staff. In short, I became a participant observer.
I interviewed the Red’s first four general directors, in some cases more than once, and interacted extensively with the fifth, who was in charge during my fieldwork. I also had a conversation with the sixth, appointed in 2020, shortly before I finished this book. I carried out a large number of interviews with managers, staff, and students, but I also witnessed and took part in many discussions as I hung out with staff over lunch and in coffee breaks between meetings, and I had many informal, private conversations. Most interviews were undertaken under conditions of anonymity, and I will extend anonymization or pseudonymization to all actors, as is standard practice in academic studies of education, unless identifying the subject is unavoidable for the narrative to make sense (for example, in the case of the general directors) and their view is relatively uncontroversial, or their view or action was made publicly.
Quotations that are referenced derive from internal reports; those that are not come from my own interviews and observations.
33 Introduction