Stephanie Lou George tappu drumming in Queens, NY to invoke the Universal Mother

As is customary, the GC’s Ethnomusicology Program had an impressive presence at the 2019 SEM Annual Conference in Indianapolis in November. Seven students presented papers, and two others participated in panels. Prof. Peter Manuel also presented a paper, and Prof. Sugarman participated in a roundtable. The papers were as follows:

Brian Bond: “Performing Pain: Emotion and Islamic Meaning in Sindhi Sufi Poetry Performance”

María Agustina Checa, “Analog Weavings: Relational Musical Values in Argentina’s Indie Scene Artisanal Cassette Production”

Carlos A. Cuestas Pinto: “De Fandangos y Carnavales: Afro-Mestizo Music-Making Spaces in Colonial Andean Colombia”

Miranda Fedock: “Silencing Tibet? Trungkar, Memory, and Precarity in a Tibetan Exile Community in Nepal”

Stephanie L. George: “’Call Up’: Mobilizing Sonic Materialities in Indo-Guyanese Madrasi Music and Spirit Mediumship and the Politics of Diasporic Belonging”

Peter Manuel: “The Rosalía Polemic: Gypsy-face Minstrelsy, ‘Cultural Appropriation,’ and Ethnic Relations in Spain”

Rajeswari Ranganathan: “Rhythmically Structured Kalpana Swarams in Carnatic Music: Aesthetics, Authority and Gender Equity through Improvisation”

Elaine Sandoval: “Making Space in the State: Música Llanera and the Spectacular in Venezuela’s El Sistema”

Roundtable participants were the following:

Bradford Garvey: “Music in/as Exchange: Valuation and Commodification in Musical Sociality”

George Murer: “Academic Research and Cultural Production in Times of Political Distress”

Jane Sugarman: “Social and Cultural Theory in Contemporary Ethnomusicology: Trends and Directions”

In other news, GC student Agustina Checa was awarded the 2019 Hewitt Pantaleoni Prize for the best student paper delivered at the annual meeting of MACSEM, the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology.  Her winning paper was entitled “Reclaim the Album as an Oeuvre:  Artisanal Cassette Production and Musical Value in Argentina.”

Five students successfully defended their dissertations in recent months:

Joseph Alpar, “Music and Jewish Practice in Contemporary Istanbul:  Preserving Heritage, Bending Tradition”

Johnny Frias: “Afro-Cuba Transnational: Recordings and the Mediation of Afro-Cuban Traditional Music”

Bradford Garvey: “The Gift of Rule: The Politics and Performance of Legitimacy in the Sultanate of Oman”

George Murer: “The Performance and Patronage of Baloch Culture through Music (and Related Arts) in the Eastern Arabian Peninsula”

Amir Hosein Pourjavady: “Music Making in Iran: Developments between the Sixteenth and Late Nineteenth Centuries”

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