Ethnomuzácologist: An interdisciplinary take on Indigenous ancestry, music, and poetry.
Ethnomuzácologist is a literary and sonic reflection on my PhD journey in Ethnomusicology. It functions as a companion project to my dissertation, exploring the intersections of research, identity, and creative process. As a first-generation child of immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and Japan, and with ancestral roots in the Istmo de Tehuantepec Zapotec and K’iche Maya Peoples, I use this project to navigate what it means to study sound and culture from within the diaspora. It is both a self-study and a meditation on the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of being an ethnomusicologist in the twenty-first century. However, many versions of the work I produce are in consultation with my ancestral voices and community members, either living or non-living. In Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity, Laura Harjo advocates that these concepts should not be static categorizations but rather treated as interwoven themes that either manifest through music-making, motivate composition and performance, or present imagined realities and possibilities based on Indigenous ways of knowing (2019). In my attempt to navigate academic spaces, including my own internalized trauma and insecurity, I craft an interdisciplinary web of introspection and scholarly analysis.
Ethnomusicology is often described as the study of music in culture and culture in music. Yet, Ethnomuzácologist expands this understanding to include the sounds of daily life, the silences of reflection, and the vibrations that connect people across borders. Each episode or entry—whether a poem, sound collage, playlist, or interview—offers a distinct way of listening. Some are live, others recorded or written, but all are guided by the same curiosity: how can sound help us understand the self, our communities, and our place within larger systems of knowledge?
This project also reflects on the ongoing conversations around decolonization in ethnomusicology. Inspired by Indigenous and diasporic scholars, Ethnomuzácologist engages with questions of positionality, listening, and accountability. It considers how music, storytelling, and creative research can function as acts of care, healing, and reconnection. Through literary writing and sound, I seek to transform the process of academic research into one of resonance—an exploration of memory, movement, and meaning.
Ultimately, Ethnomuzácologist is a practice in listening to the process itself. It bridges scholarship and creativity, theory and lived experience. It is where I translate the work of the dissertation into sound and story, and where I begin to hear what the journey of becoming an ethnomusicologist honestly sounds like.
