Topic Post for Ethnographic Fieldwork

For my ethnographic fieldwork project, I will be attending the Brown/RISD Hillel’s weekly Havurah service.  This service is uniquely oriented around group singing and is located in a high ceilinged room that fits 30-40 people.  I am told everyone sits in a circle and participates in the music making, which includes a lot of harmonizing and a broad repertoire of songs from many periods of Jewish history.

Many questions and issues will come up in this study.  Where and when did the songs come from?  How did they come to be sung here at Brown in 2012?  Who comes to these services?  What kinds of backgrounds do people have, what other communities are they a part of?  Do people focus on songs’ texts?  What nigunim (wordless songs) are sung and what role do they play in the service?  How does music mediate the experience and liturgical content of the service? Looking at the technical construction of the music, what melodic and harmonic modes are used? Are there recurring motives and progressions?

I am Jewish but have not practiced in college nor been a part of the Jewish community at Brown.  I am coming to this project, then, with a conflicted notion of my own connection to this community.  On the one hand, I will likely be familiar with many of the customs and songs of a Shabbat service.  On the other, I have stood apart from the broader Jewish community for several years, have not engaged with this local community, and will be approaching the service with an academic lens.  It is from this liminal position that I will attempt to flesh out an ethnography of the Havurah group and the music it produces.