Musical Imagery From a Cross-Cultural Methodological Perspective

The scope of this chapter is to address how people originating from different cultures link music to images; specifically, we focus on the challenges of conducting research in cross-cultural settings and develop a framework for maintaining appropriate ethics in cross-cultural research. The complexities of cross-cultural research are highlighted by assessing methods that aspire to capture musical imagery data as two-/three-dimensional forms of representation created by musicians hailing from different cultural backgrounds. Drawing on perspectives from psychology, sociology, and ethnomusicology, this chapter explores how inherent aspects of experimental design may impact results in unexpected or even unwanted ways, and discusses potential reasons for methodological failure. We outline cross-cultural and societal aspects, such as existing associations between images, metaphors, sounds, and thought concepts, which should necessarily be considered during experimental design. Finally, we discuss ethical concerns one should have when conducting such research. While it is likely that musical imagery is an unconscious process, and that both its real-world existence and academic definition are dependent on universally as well as culturally embedded traits, findings from ongoing research projects illustrate that lack of cross-disciplinary contextual preparation can impact on experimental results.