MA, School of Music, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand / In 2003 I made a documentary film called Karoo Kitaar Blues with South African songwriter and guitarist, David Kramer, on the rare musicians, music, and instruments of scattered coloured communities in the Northern Cape. When I set out, seven years ago, to make the film I had no intention of making an ethnographic film or producing a visual ethnography in the anthropological sense (I am a documentary filmmaker), but two academic reviews, critical of its lack of ‘ethnographic context’ caught my intention. This dissertation attempts to respond to their critique. I explore the territory of visual anthropology and ethnographic methodology in order to understand why my film, with hindsight, is and is not ‘ethnographic’, and to establish how ethnographic practice could enhance my work as a filmmaker. I use Karoo Kitaar Blues as my visual monograph and examine the differences between ethnographic film and documentary (in the observational mode) with reference to ethnographic methodologies and theory in ethnomusicology, and consider how film can be used ‘as’ ethnography or ‘in’ ethnography. I conclude that Karoo Kitaar Blues film lies somewhere between ethnographic and observational filmmaking.