La dimensión visual de la práctica instrumental: perspectivas teóricas, metodológicas y experiencias "fílmicas" de investigación

In "The ethnomusicologist" (1971) Mantle Hood wrote: "The film is an indispensable and perhaps the most important form of documentation available for the ethnomusicologist." The ephemeral nature of the musical event itself, in its space-time dimension, requires the representation of the sounds and images through audiovisual recording. If it is the motor behavior that produces the sound, thus the sound image becomes an indispensable element in the representation of performance techniques related to instrumental practices, and processes of construction of musical instruments, elements that neither verbal description nor sound recording can fully represent. In this essay I discuss the benefits of filming instrumental practices in ethnomusicology through an ethno-organological study based on analysis of documentary films and research films representing some traditional musicians from Cameroon and the Trás-os-Montes region in Portugal. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]