Music Research Seminary: Barley Norton (Goldsmiths, University of London)

In this seminar, Professor Norton will reflect on his ethnographic work in Vietnam and discuss the potential of filmmaking as a medium for research. Tracing the trajectory of his fieldwork from the 1990s to the present, he will outline some of the different ways he has worked with video, from documenting the songscapes of spirit possession rituals through to recent collaborative projects with experimental musicians and multimedia projects funded by the British Council. The seminar will also raise questions about the boundaries between ethnography and art practice through considering audiovisual work like the film/installation How to Improve the World (2021) by the Hanoi-based artist Nguyễn Trinh Thi.

About Barley Norton

Professor Barley Norton is an ethnomusicologist and filmmaker with research interests in the music and culture of Southeast Asia. He is the director of Goldsmiths’ Asian Music Unit (AsMU), the convenor of the MA in Music (Ethnomusicology), and the leader of the Goldsmiths Gamelan Group. He has conducted extensive field research in Vietnam and his publications include a monograph on ritual music and spirit possession titled Songs for the Spirits: Music and Mediums in Modern Vietnam (University of Illinois Press, 2009). READ MORE.