Ethnomusicology as Interdisciplinary Musicology: a Case Study

Item

Identifier
Ethno as InterD Musicolog
Title
Ethnomusicology as Interdisciplinary Musicology: a Case Study
Date
2001
extracted text
Ethnomusicology as Interdisciplinary Musicology:
A Case Study
By Sean Williams

Introduction
Ethnomusicologists belong to an inherently interdisciplinary musicology. We often come to graduate work in the field with undergraduate
training in Western music and anthropology, and take graduate courses in
politics, religion, cultural studies, multicultural literature, and related
fields. Like our colleagues in musicology, we learn several languages (at
least one local language and often a national or colonial language as well
as French and/or German). Mter graduating with Ph.D.s in ethnomusicology and beginning careers as assistant professors, we are generally expected to teach four or five courses a year, including a Western "classical"
music survey course and very often a world music survey course'! Of
course, this graduate school track does not apply to all of us, but surely to
many. When the moment comes to present survey course material to our
students, however, we tend to back away from that interdisciplinary approach in favor of covering as many areas, genres, and musical terms as
possible. Greater coverage may be the norm either because it was ordered
from the college administration or simply because it reflects the way many
of us received survey courses as undergraduates. This article uses the case
study of interdisciplinary work in music at The Evergreen State College as
a potential pathway to greater depth of understanding at an undergraduate level than one might otherwise achieve.
The Evergreen State College
Teaching music at a small undergraduate liberal arts college has its advantages and disadvantages for both teachers and students, both of which
are likely to be recognized at each end (teaching and learning) of the instructional spectrum. Among the disadvantages are the small numbers of
curricular offerings, appropriate facilities, support staff, and performing
ensembles. When that small liberal arts college is described as having "the
best academic reputation of any regional liberal arts college, public or private, in the nation" (U.S. News and World Report 2000 College Guide), and
is "known far and wide for its interdisciplinary, collaborative coordinated
studies programs" (Kliewer 1999: 182), however, the advantages outweigh
the disadvantages. 2 Since 1967, The Evergreen State College has been known
in academic and administrative circles for its innovative, interdisciplinary
Current Musicology 65
© 2001 Columbia University

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approaches to teaching and learning, for its hands-on work across every
discipline, and for its steadfast refusal to conform to traditional methodology.3 Although many graduate programs in ethnomusicology fully expect
their students to be interdisciplinary, it is often much more difficult to relocate the model of effective graduate school teaching to an undergraduate context.
A large number of structural features set Evergreen apart from most
other small liberal arts colleges. I was hired in 1991 to bring "world music"
to Evergreen, a mostly undergraduate public liberal arts college with only
two full-time music faculty, no formal departments, no majors, no faculty
ranking, few exams, and a system of narrative evaluations instead of grades.
Most teaching and learning at Evergreen is done in year-long, team-taught,
full-time interdisciplinary "programs" centered on an issue or problem.
Evergreen's credo, as printed in the College's catalog, is as follows:
1. The main purpose of a college is to teach, and good teaching involves close interaction between faculty and students.
2. Collaborative or shared learning is better than learning in isolation
and in competition with others.
3. Teaching across differences is critical to learning.
4. Connected learning-pulling together different ideas and concepts
-is better than learning separated bits of information.
5. Active learning-applying what is learned to projects and activitiesis better than passively receiving knowledge.
6. The only way to thoroughly understand abstract theories is to apply
them to real-world situations.
How do music students fare at a place where building a traditional music track is virtually impossible, and where jazz bands, orchestras, choirs
and rows of practice rooms do not exist? The shortest answer is that these
students build their musical knowledge through an understanding of context.
Teaching the Western Canon
Each of the (now four) full-time music faculty rotate through an introductory program, often titled Foundations of the Performing Arts. In a
faculty team with participants from dance and theater, we present the
Western canon of (music) theory, history, performance, and composition
through workshops, lectures, films, and seminars. The dance and theater
faculty members do the same for their respective disciplines. By the end of
the year, each student not only understands the "favored" discipline, but
also has a fundamental understanding of music's sister disciplines of
dance and theater. Most importantly, however, the performing arts of

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Europe and North America are firmly grounded in historical, political, religious, and philosophical context. Each faculty member in music is free
to offer students that background in the way most appropriate to his or
her training and interests, and in consultation with dance and theater colleagues.
An example of this approach in Western classical music is our teaching
of the Classical era. Students not only read about Mozart, Haydn, and
Beethoven, but they have to be able to understand and discuss in seminars
the Age of Enlightenment and its effect on the performing arts and society in general. They also have to know about the position of the Ottoman
Empire at the end of the eighteenth century, and the impact of Turkish
culture on Western Europe. When I teach this program, I include a supplementary lecture on Turkish music so that my students can hear the
Turkish elements in classical-era pieces. 4 Students compose minuets in the
Classical style, which they must perform for the class (even if they start out
being unable to play an instrument, they must at least perform a melody
and bass line together on the piano before they complete the program).
They may also learn to dance a minuet.
When I teach the music of Debussy, I sometimes invite a colleague from
the visual arts to discuss the works of Monet and others of the Impressionist era. I have also done the slide show and lecture myself. Depending
on the year and the teaching team, Foundations of the Performing Arts
may actually include a member of the visual arts faculty. Because Evergreen is fortunate to have a Sundanese gamelan from West Java, I often
bring in my gamelan ensemble to perform so that the students can better
understand the relationships between tones. Whether Debussy revealed
direct influence from the gamelan (or other Asian musics) in his own
compositions is still under debate; making the students aware of the discussion (and, indeed, engaging them in it during seminar) is quite enlightening. When my gamelan players then invite my program members to
try out the gamelan, the issues (and their grasp of Impressionism and of
Debussy at the turn of the century) become much more focused for them
than if they simply read about them in an article.
The previous two examples have been taken from the Foundations of
the Performing Arts program; however, the majority of my teaching occurs outside of the Euro-American "classical" music realm. The following
two examples are typical of how ethnomusicology appears in the context
of a full-time undergraduate interdisciplinary program at Evergreen. In
each case, few of the students came to the program with significant training in music or cultural studies.

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Asian Performing Arts and Culture
In the 1996-97 school year I taught a program titled "Asian Performing
Arts and Culture" with a specialist in dance of the Orissa region of East
Central India and a theater specialist in Chinese opera. Together we not
only offered an introduction to the four expressive culture areas of China,
Japan, India, and Indonesia, but also created a performance combining
Chinese opera, Orissi classical dance, and Indonesian music. A typical
week included intensive instruction in Hindi (or Mandarin, or Indonesian) language, tai chi practice each morning, seminars on Asian literature in translation,5 films, and lectures or presentations on music, dance,
theater, politics, and religion. By the end of the first quarter, all students
could speak rudimentary aspects of their chosen language, and were able
to make basic-level presentations of Chinese opera, Orissi dance, or
Indonesian gamelan to their colleagues. They each gave a lecture on a single aspect of an Asian performing art: for example, the use of masks in
noh theater, gender issues in Chinese opera, or political aspects of gameIan performance. In the second quarter, students worked to deepen their
understanding of the languages, of the individual performing arts, and of
the cultural context of those arts. Each one wrote a major (25-page) paper
about an Asian performing art, in addition to text-based "response papers" prepared each week prior to seminar.
By the end of spring quarter, all students had taken instruction in
dance, music, and theater, had participated in hands-on workshops on
makeup, lighting, sound, costuming, and set design, and had created a
three-hour performance. The main performance piece was based on the
Indian epic The Mahabharata (which is also performed across Southeast
Asia). The two fighting armies from the epic comprised warriors doing
stunning acrobatics and fight scenes in Chinese opera style, with the leaders of both sides dancing the story (with supertitles) in Orissi dance style,
and musical accompaniment from the Sundanese gamelan and angklung
bamboo rattles and drums. In addition, students performed a selection
from the Chinese opera repertoire called The VVhite Snake, and a very small
section of The Ramayana. In the latter, the character of Rahwana is mortally wounded by Rama, both performing as Chinese opera warriors.
Rahwana then begs his wife's forgiveness in tears, and she-an Orissi
dancer-performs her lament upon his death. The accompaniment was
from the Sundanese tembang Sunda repertoire, with two songs specific to
those events in the epic. When the evening ended, all 75 students (in full
costume) danced a piece from the Sundanese jaipongan repertoire.
Students designed and created most of the costumes, and developed and

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ran the lighting plot. The sets were designed and buillt by the students,
and included a Chinese pavilion, an Indonesian pavilion, an Indian temple, and backdrops with volcanoes, rice fields, and batik-inspired clouds.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Irish Music
The Awakening Ireland program is another example of interdisciplinary teaching with ethnomusicology (see the appendix for a sample syllabus). I teach this program with a philosopher and a literature specialist.
Together, the three of us present a set of perspectives on Irish history,
spirituality, folklore, language, mythology, music, gender issues, literature,
oral expressive culture, and politics. In the first two quarters, students find
out about ancient Irish culture, the conquest and the famine, Irish
America, the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, and the impact of the
European Union. They learn songs in English and in Irish-Gaelic (and
learn the basics of Gaelic conversation), attend ceilis to learn set-dancing,
and many of them pick up an instrument like the pennywhistle or bodhran.
They participate in heated debates about the political situation, have seminars about James Joyce and Seamus Heaney, learn to read and write poetry using Irish meters and imagery, and watch a full spectrum of Irish
films. They cook Irish food for potlucks every few weeks, and collect family
stories (primarily about displacement and emigration). The students create a major integrative paper every few weeks that brings together elements from everything we have studied. For example, a student might
write a paper on seaweed and its position in the intertidal zone-dependent on both the land and the sea-citing seaweed songs, poetry,6 the film
titled The Field, lectures on the medicinal properties of seaweed, and the
importance of seaweed to the coastal Irish. Or a student might create a paper examining the ways in which the Irish refined their image in early
twentieth-century America, changing a desperate famine song ("Come Lay
Me Down") to a self-congratulatory political advertisement ("Muldoon,
the Solid Man").
In spring quarter we bring our students to Ireland (County Donegal,
on the northwest coast of the Republic) and house them in small cottages,
sometimes with Irish-speaking families. They study the language intensively each day, and take lessons in sean-nos (old style) singing, pennywhistle, fiddle, or bodhran. They also take classes in archaeology (the immediate area is strewn with dolmens and stone circles) and local crafts like
stone fence building and tapestry weaving. At night they take classes in local set dancing, poetry readings, and theater. We grill the students in seminars in the afternoons. Mter they return, they are required to write a 35page integrative paper. Students who enter the Irish program dazzled by

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the wonders of Riverdance (or wanting to drift in the mystic mists of the
Irish past) come out at the end with a much clearer understanding of the
position of Irish music in Irish society in the past and the present. 7 They
also come to understand the tricky interplay of religious, political, and societal influences on music and musicians.
Practical Considerations
Evergreen differs from most other institutions in that it does not include a grading system. Instead, we write a page-long narrative evaluation
of each student at the end of each quarter. We also spend up to an hour
or more with each student at the end of the quarter to go over his or her
development in critical analysis, verbal articulation, intellect, and general
grasp of the material. In music, that evaluative session might include a discussion of the student's skills on a particular instrument. With only 25
seminar students to work with for an entire year, we come to know our students extremely well, and can be quite specific in our evaluations of their
development, learning processes, and overall potential. s In addition to
our narrative evaluations, we tend to know our students so well that exams
sometimes are superfluous. When you see a student nearly every day and
work closely with that student in a seminar, you come to more easily understand that student's grasp of the "core knowledge" of a particular culture and its music.
My purpose in offering these examples of how I practice ethnomusicology at Evergreen is to point out the advantages of the end result: undergraduate students who can approach musics of the world (including
Western classical music) with many of the same interdisciplinary capabilities as graduate students. Isn't it logical that our undergraduate students
should know enough about Islamic cultures (and read at least some of the
Qur'an) to place Arab classical music in context? Would you talk to your
students about current South Mrican vocal music without a seminar on
apartheid? Would you teach sea shanties without taking your students on a
boat and (literally) teaching them the ropes?9
Interdisciplinary study is a luxury, and it costs money. Faculty salaries
are quite low so that we can maintain our low faculty/student ratio of 1 to
25. Compared to other institutions in the region, a large proportion of the
College'S money (most of which comes from the state) goes to direct instruction, rather than facilities, support staff, or grounds maintenance. We
have very little in the way of sports, and few wealthy alumni. We average
twenty hours a week of direct contact time with our students, and eight
hours a week of college governance. Writing specifically of professors at
Evergreen and similar campuses, Kliewer notes that "the emotional and

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physical energy and intensity required of faculty at these campuses is often
beyond belief" (Kliewer 1999: 226). Faculty members rarely repeat a program, choosing instead to switch teaching teams and areas of study each
year. lO As a result, we are all required to stay current within not only our
own disciplines, but also those of our current teaching teams. It is a haven
for those among us who are perennial students, and hell on earth for
those of us with poor time management skills. 11
If you are unable to convince your administration to switch to a more
interdisciplinary model, you do have the option of incorporating the
ideas, even into survey courses. My first suggestion is to do more with less:
cover fewer areas with more depth. Rather than examining Mrica and the
Americas in fall and Europe and Asia in the spring, consider West Mrica
alone in fall and East Asia in spring, changing emphases each year. If you
plan to cover Japanese theater music, ask your students to read Fumiko
Enchi's Masks (about noh theater) or Junichiro Tanizaki's Some Prefer
Nettles (about bunraku puppet theater). For South America, try Jose Marfa
Arguedes' Deep Rivers or Alejo Carpentier's The Lost Steps. No work of literature will be the perfect complement to a survey course in music, but
sometimes it is exactly the problematic works (as in Colin McPhee's A
House in Bali) that lead to the best discussions. Break your students into
seminars once every two weeks for more effective skill-building in critical
analysis.l 2 Many of us lead informal seminars as part of our lectures each
day, but it works even better sometimes to teach with your mouth shut. By
making this a formal seminar, you indicate to your students that you expect a certain level of preparation and engagement in the topic, not simply knee-jerk reactions to the lecture of the day.
Hold a potluck once every term, and require your students to locate
and prepare ingredients for culturally appropriate recipes (or local substitutes for those ingredients). Break them into cooking teams of three to
five people to minimize the financial impact on them. Ask the students to
talk about the foods-when and why they are used, special methods, etc.
Ask your colleagues in other disciplines if small groups of your students
may sit in on particular lectures outside of your regular class times (for example, an introduction to Islam, the current political situation in Brazil,
linguistic anthropology and its application to Malagasy culture, deforestation and tourism in Costa Rica). Invite the students of your colleagues to
do the same, especially for your large lecture courses with several hundred
seats. Lastly, involve your students in community events, such as smallgroup performances at a local farmers' market. Granted, this approach
may work only for survey courses with a performance component. 13
It is useful to normalize the use of appropriate indigenous terms in the
classroom. This does not mean only the musical terms, but also terms that
convey something of the above-mentioned core knowledge. In teaching

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about Brazilian music, I ask my students to build a seminar around the
term saudade, the Portuguese word for which we do not have quite the
equivalent in English. 14 Among Brazilian musicians, saudade comes up so
frequently in conversations and in song lyrics that understanding it is simply a must for understanding Brazilian music. In Indonesian music classes
I use a handful of local nonmusical terms regularly, and these words always seem to find their way into my students' daily speech with one another. When I teach my students to speak Irish as part of their work in oldstyle Irish song, I explain that the only way to express possession is to
indicate that something is "at" yoU. 15 Providing our students with insiders'
knowledge about language also offers a glimpse into the ways in which traditional musicians shape their cosmology.
It is very challenging to give up some of the details of music in one's
teaching. Students come away with fewer indigenous terms and fewer areas covered. However, you will have brought in outside elements that help
not only to cement the musical material that you have already presented,
but also to ground the students' experiences in context and/or hands-on
experience. Remember that "freedom from conventional academic structures sustains and nourishes educational innovation" (Kliewer 1999: 206).
When the students need to know more, they will know where to find the
information. Our work develops their skills in critical thought, in understanding cultural context, and in appropriately locating musical practices,
behaviors, and concepts.
Appendix
1. Yearlong syllabus for Asian Performing Arts and Culture, taught by professors
in ethnomusicology, Indian dance, and Chinese opera.
Schedule
9:00-10:00
Mon
10:00-12:00
1:00-3:00
Tues
9:00-11:00

Wed
Thurs

12:30-2:30
9:00-10:00
10:00-12:00
9:00-11:00
12:30-2:30

Tai Chi (in spring quarter: jaipongan)
Lectures
Language Workshops (Mandarin, Indonesian, Hindi)
Performance Workshops (gamelan, Orissi dance,
Chinese opera)
Films
Tai Chi (in spring quarter: jaipongan)
Seminars
Performance Workshops (gamelan, Orissi dance,
Chinese opera)
Lectures

Fall Quarter
Week One: Introduction to Chinese Opera.
Assignment for next week: Chinese Opera Performance. The Wonder That Was
India, vol. I (pp. 1-78 and 137-88), by A. L. Basham.

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Week Two: Introduction to Indian History and Performing Arts; India: Empire of the
Spirit.
Assignment for next week: China: Its History and Culture by W. Scott Morton.
Week Three: Introduction to Chinese History and Performing Arts; To Live!
Assignment for next week: A House in Bali by Colin McPhee.
Week Four: Introduction to Indonesian History and Culture.
Assignment for next week: The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu.
Week Five: Introduction to Japanese History and Culture.
Assignment for next week: Guru Kelucharan Mahapatara (Orissi Music and
Dance) performance. The Wonder That Was India, vol. I (pp. 232-256 and
297-342), and articles on Islam to be handed out in class. Finish gathering
books and articles for your essay.
Week Six: Hinduism and Islam; The Bandit Queen.
Assignment for next week: The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, and Embrace Tiger,
Retum to Mountain: The Essence of Tai Ji by Chungliang Al Huang. Finish writing the first draft of your research essay, and turn it in on Monday.
Week Seven: Confucianism and Confucian Music; Taoism.
Assignment for next week: The Wonder That Was India, vol. I (pp. 256-287), and
Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel; complete the second draft of your
research essay.
Week Eight: Buddhism.
Assignment for next week: Complete work on your essay; have it ready to turn in at
the time of your presentation. Finish preparations for your presentation.
Week Nine: Student Presentations.
Assignment for next week: Finish preparations for your presentation; create a draft
of your self-evaluation.
Week Ten: Student Presentations.
Assignment for next week: Evaluations. Come with evaluations of self and faculty.
Read The Wonder That Was India, part II (pp. xvii-xx, 91-153, and 231-316).
Wmter Quarter
Week One: Japanese Theater (Kabuki); Set Design Workshop.
Assignment for next week: Studies in Kabuki: Its Acting, Music, and Historical Context
by Brandon, MaIm and Shively.
Week Two: Japanese Theater (Noh and Bunraku) , Dance (Buyoh and Butoh) , Music
(solo instrumental traditions); Costume Design Workshop.
Assignment for next week: Shakuntala by Kalidasa; Chitra and Chandalika by Tagore.
Week Three: Indian Theater; Lighting Design Workshop.
Assignment for next week: The Mahabharata by Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan.
Week Four: Indian Classical Music and Dance; Lighting and Carpentry Workshops 1.
Assignment for next week: Chinese Theater by Colin Mackerras, chapters 1-5 only.
Week Five: Chinese Theater; Lighting and Carpentry Workshops.
Assignment for next week: Chinese Theater, chapters 6 and 7. Finish gathering
books and articles for your research essay.
Week Six: Chinese Theater; Farewell My Concubine; Chinese Music.

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Assignment for next week: Javanese Shadow Puppets by Ward Keeler and "The
Education of a Dalang" by I Nyoman Sedana (photocopy). Finish writing the
first draft of your research essay, and turn it in on Monday.
Week Seven: Indonesian Theater and Dance; Sound and Media Workshop.
Assignment for next week: Read photocopied handouts on Indonesia. Complete
the second draft of your research essay, due Monday of week eight.
Week Eight: Indonesian Music; Makeup Workshop.
Assignment for next week: Complete work on your essay; have it ready to turn in at
the time of your presentation. Finish preparations for your presentation.
Week Nine: Student Presentations; Costumes/Painting Workshop.
Assignment for next week: Complete work on your essay and finish preparations
for presentation; if you have already completed both, create a draft of your
self-evaluation.
Week Ten: Student Presentations; Costumes/Painting Workshop.
Assignment for next week: Evaluations. Come with evaluations of self and faculty.
Spring Quarter
Week One: Technical Theater Workshops.
Assignment for next week: TheJoy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
Week Two: Technical Theater Workshops.
Assignment for next week: Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong.
Week Three: Technical Theater Workshops.
Assignment for next week: The Guide by R.K Narayan.
Week Four: Performance Preparation.
Assignment for next week: The Inner Courtyard by Lakshmi Holmstrom.
Week Five: Performance Preparation.
Assignment for next week: Masks by Fumiko Enchi.
Week Six: Performance Preparation.
Assignment for next week: Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki.
Week Seven: Performance Preparation.
Assignment for next week: Indonesian short stories (various authors).
Week Eight: Performances in Seattle (Northwest Folklife Festival, Museum of
History).
Week Nine: Dress Rehearsals and Cue-to-Cue.
Assignment for next week: Clear your schedule for the entire week. Expect to be
available after the final performance to help strike the set and clean up.
Week Ten: Final Performances.
Assignment for next week: Evaluations. Come with evaluations of self and faculty.
2. Fall Quarter syllabus for Awakening Ireland: From the Power of the Bards to
the Call of the Euro, taught by an ethnomusicologist, a philosopher, and a literature professor.

Week One:
9/27
9:00-1:00

Cead Mile Fiiilte! Thematic Overviews
Program introduction (read 0 hEithir before Thursday)
Orality and Literacy, pt.l (Charlie)

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Studying Ireland (Patrick)
Films: History of Ireland; Atlanteans, pt.1
Starting on Gaelic (Sean)
9/29
Integrative seminars (come prepared with five poems
from the Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry, be
able to read aloud and discuss them with your colleagues)
2:45-3:15
Final gathering
Assignment for next week: The Triin (Thomas Kinsella) and pages 5-39 of The
Cultural Conquest of Ireland (Kevin Collins).
9/28

10:00-12:00
2:30-5:30
9:00-11:00
12:30-2:30

Week Two:
10/4
9:00-11:00
11:30-1:00
10/5
10:00-12:00
2:30-5:30
10/6
9:00-11:00

Ancient Ireland: Poetry and Place
Book seminars on The Triin and Collins
Gaelic in Language, Place Names, and Songs (Sean)
Bardic and Druidic Traditions (Sean)
Animated film: Celtic Trilogy; film: Atlanteans, pt.2
Reading of "Translations," Orality and Literacy, pt.2
(Charlie)
Integrative seminars
12:30-2:30
Final gathering
2:45-3:15
Assignment for next week: Every Earthly Blessing (Esther DeWaal).
Week Three:
10/11
9:00-11:00
11:30-1:00
10/12
10:00-12:00
2:30-5:30
10/13
9:00-11:00
12:30-2:30
2:45-3:15
Assignment for next week:

Ancient Ireland: Spirituality and Place
Book seminars on Every Earthly Blessing
Indigenous Christianity (Patrick)
World Oral Narrative and Linguistic Ties (Charlie)
Film: Celtic Monasticism
Gaelic Poetry and Song (Sean)
Integrative seminars
Final gathering
The Serpent and the Goddess (Mary Condren). First integrative paper due on Tuesday, October 17 in your
seminar leader's mailbox.

Week Four:
10/18
9:00-11:00
11:30-1:00
10/19
10:00-12:00
2:30-5:30
9:00-11:00
10/20
12:30-2:30
2:45-3:15
Assignment for next week:

Ancient Ireland through the Conquest
Book seminars on The Serpent and the Goddess
On Writing Poetry (Charlie)
Patrick and Bridget (Patrick)
Film: The Secret of Roan Inish
Irish resource material; film: Saint Patrick: A Biography
Integrative seminars
Final gathering
The Cultural Conquest of Ireland (Kevin Collins).

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Week Five:
10/25
9:00-11:00
11:30-1:00
10:00-12:00
10/26
2:30-5:30
9:00-11:00
10/27
12:30-2:30
2:45-3:15
Assignment for next week:

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The Conquest
Book seminars on The Cultural Conquest of Ireland
Ancient Irish Music (Sean)
Telling Stories (Charlie)
Film: The Curse of Cromwell and The Penal Days
Getting Performance Groups Together (Charlie)
Integrative seminars
Final gathering
Paddy's Lament (Thomas Gallagher).

Week Six:
9:00-11:00
11/1
11:30-1:00

The Great Hunger-An Corta Mar
Book seminars on Paddy's Lament
English and Irish Historiography of the Famine
(Patrick)
Responding to the Famine (Patrick)
10:00-12:00
11/2
Film: When Ireland Starved
2:30-5:30
Activity: Finalize performance groups
Reading of Thomas Murphy's The Famine
11/3
9:00-11:00
Integrative seminars
12:30-2:30
Final gathering
2:45-3:15
Assignment for next week: Unmanageable Revolutionaries (Margaret Ward). Second
integrative paper due on Tuesday, November 7 in
your seminar leader's mailbox.
The Rising
Book seminars on Unmanageable Revolutionaries
TBA
Men's History and Women's History: The Parnells
(Patrick)
Gaelic work (Sean); film: Mother Ireland
2:30-5:30
Collaborative study on exam topics (exam to be
9:00-11:00
11/10
handed out)
12:30-2:30
Integrative seminars
Final gathering
2:45-3:15
Assignment for next week: Three Plays (Sean 0' Casey) .

Week Seven:
11/8
9:00-11:00
11:30-1:00
10:00-12:00
11/9

Early 20 th-Century Urban Dublin
Book seminars on O'Casey plays
Traditions of Moral Force and Physical Force
(Patrick)
11/16
10:00-12:00
Collaborative study on exam topics
2:30-5:30
Gaelic work (Sean); film: The Informer
11/17
All Day
Finish your exam; turn it in by 5 pm
Assignment for ninth week: Dubliners (James Joyce).

Week Eight:
11/15
9:00-11:00
11:30-1:00

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THANKSGMNG BREAK (NOVEMBER 18-26)!!
Early 20 th-Century Urban Dublin
Book seminars on Dubliners
The Art and Politics of Sean O'Casey (Patrick and
Charlie)
10:00-12:00
The Art ofJames Joyce (Charlie)
11/30
2:30-5:30
Films: Juno and the Paycock and The Dead
9:00-11:00
Gaelic work (Sean); reading of "The Rising of the
12/1
Moon"
Integrative seminars
12:30-2:30
2:45-3:15
Final gathering
Assignment for next week: Third integrative paper due on Tuesday, December 5,
in your seminar leader's mailbox. Prepare your performances! Portfolios are due to faculty by 24 hours
after your performance.

Week Nine:
11/29
9:00-11:00
11:30-1:00

Week Ten:
12/6
9:00-11:00
11:30-1:00
12/7
10:00-12:00
2:30-5:30
9:00-11:00
12/8
12:30-2:30

Performances
Performances
Performances
Performances
Performances
Evaluations
Evaluations

Notes
l. For a more detailed study of life within schools of music, see Nettl (1989,

1995).
2. Evergreen is located on a thousand acres of temperate rainforest in the
Pacific Northwest, within the city limits of the state capital. It has a student body of
about 4000, and 174 faculty, 88% of whom have a Ph.D. or terminal degree. The
faculty are 45% female to 55% male, and 26% of the faculty are people of color.
The students are 59% female to 41 % male, and 17% are students of color.
Evergreen has four full-time faculty in music; in addition, Evergreen employs several part-time music faculty. With no traditional departments, the music, dance,
and theater faculty are grouped together with media and visual arts faculty in the
Expressive Arts Planning Group.
3. "The mission for which The Evergreen State College was founded is fulfilled
by an institution-wide climate of engagement, involvement and intellectual curiosity. We find these achievements to be almost unparalleled in higher education in
the United States." Quoted from the Commission on Colleges Evaluation Report,
October 1998.
4. During this past year I brought in six dozen croissants and talked with the
students about the creation of the croissant in commemoration of the Ottoman
approach to Vienna. I am not sure that the students thoroughly connected crois-

SEAN WILLIAMS

95

sants (representing the Islamic crescent) with Mozart, but I certainly had their full
attention while I distributed the croissants.
5. I have included in the appendix two examples of a typical syllabus that I
would use for an interdisciplinary program that includes ethnomusicology. I try to
find good examples of local literature (or notated versions of oral literature) for
the students; however, in the case of Indonesian, I translated five short stories myself and presented them to the students. I also give my Irish program students five
versions of one story that I translated from Irish Gaelic.
6. I often give them a poem by Aidan Carl Mathews, titled "The Death of Irish":
The tide gone out for good
Thirty-one words for seaweed
Whiten on the foreshore.
The students learn this poem in conjunction with their studies of Irish-Gaelic-not
just the language itself, but its fall and recent rise in twentieth-century Irish and
Irish-American society. The trochaic nature of its second and third lines also mimics the Gaelic tendency to emphasize the first syllable of each word, making those
lines more inherently Gaelic.
7. Although the students live in a rural area-and study traditional Irish music
-when we take them to Ireland, they can't help being exposed to nearly every aspect of current Irish popular culture and its musics, from Sinead O'Connor to The
Corrs.
S. Generally speaking, the students both love and hate the evaluation process.
As one of my students put it, "I would much rather receive a C than an evaluation
that detailed every aspect of my mediocre potential."
9. Evergreen keeps and staffs two boats for programs to use each year, whether
for marine scientists, maritime literature specialists, or ethnomusicologists.
10. In the 2001 school year, I am teaching with a Buddhist priest and a communications specialist. In 2002 I teach with a feminist theorist and a filmmaker. In
2003 I may teach with a marine ecologist. I was recently sent by the taxpayers of
Washington state to the Galapagos islands, where I learned first-hand about geology, evolution, and marine biology with a dozen science faculty. This extraordinary faculty-development opportunity was intended to enable science and arts faculty to develop new programs blending the two disciplinary perspectives. Although
Ijoked with the lone geologist on the trip about creating a program called "Rocks
and Roll," the one I genuinely intend to teach is called "The Shore," which will focus on human cultural interactions with the intertidal zone.
11. We frequently offer guest lectures to the programs of our colleagues. I recently gave a lecture/presentation on Irish musical responses to the famine for a
program on economics and agriculture; I have taught songwriting to creativewriting programs, and led forest ecology students in processional dancing with
bamboo rattles. I have even given a lecture on the nineteenth-century symphonic
and "exotic" music used to represent aliens in science fiction films and television
shows, including Star Trek.
12. The ideal seminar size is about a dozen students. However, a group of
twenty-five is still feasible. Ask your students to bring in a response paper to a

96

CURRENT MUSICOLOGY

book, film, or piece of music, and to prepare for critical analysis. Meet them at a
coffeehouse or your own home, and make sure they speak. It not only prepares
them better for graduate school seminars or even real-world discussions, but it also
causes them to extemporaneously shape critical opinions and express them in a
way that extends far beyond the "I like it"/"I don't like it" dichotomy that characterizes many undergraduate interactions.
13. In the Music and Dance of Brazil and the Caribbean program, we had our
students join with a large local batucada (Brazilian processional drumming) community group. The group welcomed our students as drummers and dancers (including those with no previous experience), and they all performed in Olympia's
annual springtime "Procession of the Species," in which thousands of community
members dress up as aspects of nature and parade through the streets. The batucada group placed ads in the local paper for women of a certain age to parade as
baianas (who precede the drummers in Carnaval), and recruited hundreds of
dancers. Among the schoolchildren dressed as raindrops, the twenty men carrying
a full-sized replica of a gray whale, and the many soaring eagles and butterflies, the
batucada group ("Samba Olywa") was a highlight. It created indelible memories for
our students, and was as close to Rio as many of these students will ever get. Not
bad for a survey course.
14. Saudade is often translated as nostalgia, but it also implies longing, bittersweet feelings, yearning, and homesickness.
15. The Irish ta fidil agam translates as "there is a fiddle at me," implying equal
agency on the part of both the fiddle and the musician playing it. The larger implications of ownership also concern students when it comes to discussing the
English takeover of Irish land, and who "owns" land when local words do not express the concept.

&ferences
Akson, Alexander. 1998. Commission on Colleges Evaluation Report.
Kliewer, Joy Rosenzweig. 1999. The Evergreen State College: 'No Carbon Copy of
Other State Institutions.' In The Innovative Campus: Nurturing the Distinctive
Learning Environment. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.
Nett!, Bruno. 1989. Mozart and the Ethnomusicological Study of Western Music.
Yearbook for Traditional Music 21: 1-16.
- - - . 1995. Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological &flections on Schools of Music.
University of Illinois Press.