Learning to Arrive: Approaching Ethnomusicology through Community-Driven Documentation

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore how practitioners engage with recorded sound technologies and the role of the ethnomusicologist within those practices across two vastly different but locally situated case studies in Seattle, Washington. The first case study involves the production of Carangolo, an album recorded with Fundação Internacional de Capoeira Angola (FICA), otherwise known as the International Capoeira Angola Foundation (ICAF), a community group led by Silvio dos Reis, known in the Seattle capoeira community as Mestre Silvinho. The second case study involves revitalization of the Northwest Folklife Archive, a 54-year-old community heritage collection. At the heart of my dissertation are two questions. First, how is recorded sound, whether institutional and vast like the Northwest Folklife collections or single album productions such as Carangolo, connected to practices of listening, processes of relationality, and cultural arts sustainability? Second, how has an ethnomusicologist functioned within these practices? I argue that recordings and archives are both repositories of cultural knowledge and markers of relationships. Whether a recording takes the form of a capoeira album or an archival sound collection, its significance lies not only in what it documents but also in the social relationships, responsibilities, and histories through which it was created, circulated, and remembered. Through historical research, ethnography, and applied ethnomusicological practice, I show how recordings can serve as sites of pedagogy, memory, and community formation when they remain connected to the people and cultural traditions from which they emerge. Through a comparative analysis of two case studies, I further argue that documentary projects contribute most meaningfully to cultural sustainability when they are community driven. In the case of Carangolo, the recording process became a collaborative act of cultural transmission and creativity that remains part and parcel to the practice of capoeira angola at FICA Seattle. At Northwest Folklife, I opened opportunities for community members to reconnect with recordings, reflect upon their significance, and help shape future stewardship practices. These projects demonstrate that recordings alone do not sustain cultural traditions; rather, it is the relationships surrounding their creation, circulation, and activation that give them enduring value. To study and participate in these relationships, I employed "Learning to Arrive," a methodology adapted from participatory arts practitioners in Boyle Heights and expanded by scholars of community-engaged cultural work (Lipsitz 2024, Power-Sotomayor 2024). Learning to arrive orients ethnographic practice toward community-defined protocols of engagement through relationship-building, lineage mapping, collaborative decision-making, and ongoing accountability. Tying this approach with Kim Christen's concept of "slow archiving” (2019), I propose a model of ethnomusicological practice that prioritizes the process of conversation and community stewardship within archival projects, however variably defined. In doing so, this dissertation contributes to conversations about cultural sustainability, sound recording, archives, and the evolving role of ethnomusicology in community-based cultural work.