The anthropologist as piper. "Participant observation" in 1989 at a wedding in Oltu, Erzurum province, Turkey. Rather than just taking fieldnotes (which you see on the floor), musical performance by a researcher in the field can be a way of both testing ones understanding of esthetic phenomena, and sharing this understanding with ones informants. During my time in Turkey, I sometimes played alone, but more often together with local musicians and poets. Although the bagpipes in this photograph were Swedish, the tune was an eastern Turkish dance type called "Bar". (Photo: Foto Rekor).
Ways in which different media are used in individual and group expression are discussed in "The Folk, The State and The Prophets: Music, Poetry and Politics in a Turkish province", by Daniel Winfree Papuga (Dissertation, Department and Museum of Anthropology, University of Oslo. 1995).