CALLED TO THE CONVERSATION: A DIGITAL ETHNODRAMA EXPLORING COLLISIONS OF CALLING AND SHADOW ACROSS A COHORT OF JOURNEYS INTO PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANHOOD

Abstract

Called to the Conversation is a digital ethnodrama in three movements. It is the final research product resulting from a series of interviews with nine graduates of a small liberal arts college in Detroit as conducted by their former professor. This dissertation study arose from the question: How might the curriculum of a college music department be meaningfully informed by examining the musicianship journeys of its alumni?While transcribing and exploring the nuclear episodes (McAdams, 1997), stop moments (Fels, 2019), and narrative and resonant threads (Clandinin, 2013) from these participants’ interviews, I discovered that a calling to professional musicianhood (Ansdell, 2016) leading to the pursuit of an undergraduate voice performance degree enkindled a narrative structure similar to a hero’s journey (Vogler, 2020; also Campbell, 1949/2008; Ford, 2000; Frankel, 2010). Specifically, I focused on how the interaction between a Call to Adventure (crossing the Threshold into the Otherworld of higher music education) and their Shadow fear culminated in an Ordeal to be faced before leaving the Otherworld. Methodological, structural, and artistic-theatrical influences behind this work have created a bricolage (Kincheloe, 2005; Berry, 2015) of narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2013; Riessman, 2008), performative ethnography (Denzin, 2003), currere (Pinar, 2019), a/r/tography (Irwin & Springgay, 2008; Leavy, 2009, 2013), verbatim rhythmic transcription, ethnodrama (Saldaña, 2005, 2011a), digital storytelling (Lambert & Hessler, 2020), digital performance (Dixon & Smith, 2007), and narrative monologue—all grounded in a paradigm of critical constructivism (Brooks & Brooks, 1999; Claxton, 1996; Fosnot, 2005; Freire, 1970/2018; Gay, 2018; Kincheloe, 2003, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 2009; McLaren, 2017), a philosophy of musicking (Small, 1990/2016, 1998), and a sense of relational ethics (Clandinin et al., 2018; Ellis, 2007). Engaging the processes of research and artistic creation as an a/r/tographical bricoleur (Irwin et al., 2018; Kincheloe & Berry, 2004; Pinar, 2004a) revealed new understandings of lifelong learning as a self-authoring process (Baxter Magolda, 2004, 2009) —a life curriculum into professional musicianhood. This work poses a number of questions to spark reflective conversations (Renshaw, 2007) about making space for student-musicians’ theories of musicking (Small, 1990/2016, 1998) and their subjective experience within official and operational curricula (Mayes, 2010).