Problems of Method in a Fieldwork among the Immigrant Christian Communities in Rome

In the last years, we have been working on a research project studying liturgical music performed in immigrant communities in our city, Rome. During this research many issues concerning ehtnomusicological theoretic approaches emerged. In the first part of the article, Serena Facci dealt with the problem of comparativism. Comparative methods have never been abandoned in ethnomusicology, and in postcolonial tendencies comparativism acquired new interests mostly in sociology and social anthropology. Nowadays urban and transcultural fieldworks are common in research and they require a comparative method. A case will be presented: a comparison between the realization of the Alleluia for the Gospel acclamation in different churches, a fundamental moment of the Mass, common to Roman and Oriental liturgies. The analysis will suggest considerations on melodic features and multipart singing, gestures and emotional contents. In the second part, Alessandro Cosentino dealt with the role of key figures and innovators in two different contexts: Ekatherine Kacharava, choral director of the Christian Orthodox Georgian community in Rome and father Emmanuel Cola Lubamba, composer of liturgical and religious music, choral director of the Catholic Congolese community in Rome.