As a research method, the practice of music, our version of the anthropologist’s participant observation, is essential to the way we come to understand the music and the people we eventually represent through presentation and publication. More than just the key to unlock the secret doors of discourse, I have long considered the practice and performance of Arab music to be a methodology for both my fieldwork and teaching.  “Performing in the field” facilitates exchange in non-linguistic fields and has provided my hosts a view into my personhood that transcends or complements my professional persona. On campus, in the classroom, and among the community, the performance of musics from the Arab and Islamicate world constitutes activism. The Middle Eastern Music Ensemble that I founded in 1994 has been a context for exploration, exchange, and experience among students, faculty, and invited guest artists, that, when shared through public performance, evinces a kind of unapologetic advocacy that has become central to my work. This paper describes examples of community-based collaboration and activism through music that unfolded during my ensemble’s first two international study and performances tours, both of them in 2014, one to Oman, where I have continuing research interests and the other to Morocco, the research terrain of my colleague and long-time collaborator.  While we were grateful for the cooperation and generosity of our hosts we were surprised at the ways in which our visit allowed our hosts to extend themselves in the production of public projects that may not have been possible without our participation. My analysis of six performances, three in Muscat, Oman, and one each in the Moroccan cities of Oujda, Rabat, and Marrakesh, Morocco resonates with the recent call by the SEM/ICTM Forum to “transform ethnomusicological praxis through activism and community engagement,” and asserts the ways in which our ethnographies are necessarily collaborative.