SEM Student News Vol 1
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SEM{STUDENTNEWS} An initiative of the Student Concerns Committee of the Society for IN THIS ISSUE Ethnomusicology Welcome! Letter From The Editor 1 Letter From The President Of SEM 2 Letter From The Presidents Of The SCC 3 SEM Student News Chapter Updates 4 Volume 1 | Fall 2010 Volume Conferences 5 A Word From The Pacific Review Of Ethnomusicology 5 Feature: Historical Ethnomusicology 6 Getting To Know Each Other: Three Student Profiles 6 Article: Contemplating Historical Ethnomusicology 9 Recent Student Publications 11 Call For Submissions 11 Our Staff 12 Our First Issue! a letter from the editor By Lauren E. Sweetman (New York University) I am excited to say it (so read it out ethnomusicology and related musical expression. Here we see not loud!): these are the first words of the disciplines to share their stories. We only the passion that has long driven first issue of SEM’s new student want to provide our immense, often us, but also the interdisciplinary newsletter! This particular moment disconnected community with a nature of music research to which we marks a beginning of something, and chance to get to know each other, a all can relate. beginnings are powerful. I grappled place to articulate our comings and with various ways to say hello, to goings, and a platform to voice the At SEM Student News, we ultimately welcome you, to invite you in to what debates and tensions we encounter. work for you. Please feel free to send is, for us, an undeniable labor of love. We hope to arm you with information us your input, ideas, and comments Such labor, however, often includes and updates, or, in a word, news: via email, and join our Facebook moments of stress and frustration that news of your peers, news of events, group. We want to use this newsletter perhaps reflect our more general news of experiences. as an opportunity for students to student existence. But this existence is publish and speak to each other, for what we have in common, what we Each issue will include a variety of students to experiment with forms, can all share. So please join us, as articles, interviews, and updates of ideas, and opinions that may not fit celebrators and empathizers, as conferences, publications, and other neatly into other publications at this students and colleagues, as we begin pertinent materials. Each issue will be point in our careers. So let us know this endeavor together in the devoted to a particular field or theme what you think! In letters, prose, following pages. in ethnomusicology. This issue, poetry, articles, or however else you focused on historical express yourself, we welcome you. In this newsletter, we strive to create a ethnomusicology, invites us to begin forum for students in by looking back into the richness of Society for Ethnomusicology © 1 When Nagras Roamed the Planet a letter from the president of sem By Gage Averill (University of British Columbia) When I entered graduate school in 1984, it was permanent academic jobs aren’t as easy to come by, Vol. 1 | Fall 2010 Vol. pretty obvious what an ethnomusicologist was and so some graduates find themselves in itinerant did. We studied transcription and analysis, played in sessional (“casual”) roles, working in related fields, or world music ensembles, read about the history and maintaining “independent” scholar credentials. theories of our discipline, and then went somewhere Everything from recording to publishing is direct-to- in the world to study and play music and wrote about digital, and nearly everything is available anywhere it. We debated whether the Nagra reel-to-reel tape and anytime. Hardly any information can be machine was the best for fieldwork, and we generally described as being “scarce.” {STUDENTNEWS} thought that the field could be broken down into Merriam-like approaches and Hood-like approaches. The relationship to culture-bearers, the nature of SEM We typed up field notes with carbon copies (real publishing, the ethics of fieldwork, the nature of a carbon) and mailed them home to our advisors. And “field,” the attitude towards advocacy and we saw ourselves as the guardians and promoters of intervention, the range of subjects considered valid scarce, undervalued sounds from around the world. for ethnomusicological study, and the embrace of Of course, this was changing even then, but I’m not interdisciplinary scholarship— these are all shifting making this up! under the feet of our students (and indeed under all of our feet) at an extraordinary pace. For those of us This all will register with our current sophisticated who are excited by change, these are incredible times graduate students as very quaint. Surely we must to live in, but the challenges of plotting a meaningful have also walked the four miles to school in the career (academic or not) in this world are formidable. morning and stopped to milk the cows on the way! It’s staggering to contemplate what has happened to Graduate students in the era I described at the start the discipline, and how different the intellectual typically had to wait a whole year between getting landscape must look to contemporary graduate together and discussing our issues at the annual students, a scant 25 years or so since the nostalgic meetings. That kind of approach can’t keep up with portrayal I painted above. the immediacy or range of issues confronting us now. So it strikes me as a very progressive move to bring The world is a more dangerous place and it is a more graduate students in ethnomusicology together fraught process to travel around it. So many of our through a real-time electronic journal. As President “field sites” now seem less susceptible to of the Society for Ethnomusicology, let me officially romanticization when beset by climate change, war, welcome this publication into being, and let me say ethnic cleansing, poverty and disease. Research plans that I hope it will strengthen the work of our need research ethics board approvals. Electronic graduate students and the Society as a whole. Many media are ubiquitous, so ethnomusicologists are not good things will come of this. But as a former the only ones pointing cameras and microphones. graduate student, let me say — unofficially — just Travel grants are more difficult to come by and how jealous I am of your ability to communicate necessitate much more in terms of linguistic and field with a global community of graduate students in preparation. The discipline has expanded but ethnomusicology! Society for Ethnomusicology © 2 Welcome! a letter from the student concerns committee By SCC Presidents Charlotte D’Evelyn (Univ. of Hawai’i), Ian Goldstein (UC Berkeley), and Alyson Jones (Univ. of Michigan) On behalf of the SEM Student Concerns Additionally, and in keeping with our goals, this year Vol. 1 | Fall 2010 Vol. Committee, welcome to the SEM STUDENT we are launching this student newsletter. Each issue NEWSLETTER! We are pleased and excited to will focus on one specific area of concern to students. sponsor this new newsletter, which will be a solid We encourage students to add to the above list by forum for students to connect with one another suggesting future topics for discussion! The idea is to throughout the year. actively engage with one another, both to support each other in our academic pursuits and to foster a For those of you who do not know about us, SEM’s deeper knowledge of and sensitivity to the field of {STUDENTNEWS} Student Concerns Committee (SCC) is a collective of ethnomusicology. We also seek to strengthen our SEM graduate and undergraduate student members of the community of students and future scholars through Society for Ethnomusicology. Our goal is to provide developing a mutually beneficial social network. an avenue for students to explore a broad range of topics, from methodologies, strategies for navigating We invite all SEM student members to join SCC. the academic job market, and work in applied There is truly strength in numbers. In this spirit, ethnomusicology, to how to pursue research funding, professors and other faculty are invited to join our etc. The SCC is very active at the annual SEM efforts and are welcome to attend our annual conferences. We sponsor panels, host a first-time meeting. Together we are advocating for one attendees gathering, and run a silent auction. For the another, addressing our various needs as students, first time, at SEM 2010 we are organizing a students- and cultivating a stronger field of ethnomusicology, only, off-site social outing. We are also beginning to now and for the future. hold SCC meetings at various SEM chapter conferences, with very positive feedback. Welcome, and enjoy the newsletter! SCC PRESIDENTS: (from left to right) Charlotte D’Evelyn (University of Hawai’i), Ian Goldstein (UC Berkeley), and Alyson Jones (University of Michigan). Society for Ethnomusicology © 3 SEM Student News updates from our chapter reps Southern California + Hawai’i Northern California By Loribeth T. Gregory (UC Riverside) By Kumiko X Uyeda (UC Santa Cruz) At this year’s SEMSCHC meeting, students Loribeth T. The Northern California Chapter Meeting of the SEM was Vol. 1 | Fall 2010 Vol. Gregory (UCR) and Jason Busniewski (UCSB) were voted held on March 6, 2010 at the University of California, Santa in as the new co-chairs for the following year. SEMSCHC Cruz. Included in the meeting were seven presentations, a has always had low attendance at the Student Concern's panel discussion on Web 2.0 as Pedagogy in Ethnomusicology, meetings. To remedy this, Loribeth and Jason intend to screening of the film “Kahyangan: The Balinese Journey of the publicize the committee as a way for students from various Soul,” a hands-on workshop on West Javanese Gamelan, and schools in the chapter to network and discover their similar concluded with a wonderful performance by the Central Asian interests.