The Ten Tracks Project: #2

The Ten Tracks Project

The Ten Tracks Project is an invitation to both listen and visualize ethnomusicology students’ research projects. Limited to ten sound and/or audiovisual files, Ten Tracks Project participants are challenged to create a playlist to introduce their listeners into a glimpse of the sounds, performers, audiences, dances, and/or performing spaces that they are writing, thinking, and learning about.

• Playlist author: Ana María Alarcón Jiménez
• Where do you study? Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
• Fieldwork Location: Galicia, Northwestern Spain
• Research title: Spatializing Galician Music at the International Festival of the Celtic World.
• Why are these ten tracks on your list?

Response to In Discipline

A year and a half ago we published our last contribution for the project “In Discipline: Talks from the European Side.” Since then, we have had the idea of generating a dialogue between professors and students, as a way to channel or to start to channel students’ ideas, needs, and preocupations in a horizontal and inter-generational kind of way.  The contribution below, written by the Catalan Anthropologist Josep Martí, is thus what we hope to be the first step of an ongoing conversation. Josep Martí’s text has been written in Catalan (top), and it has been translated into English (bottom),  continuing our effort to make this blog, and the In Discipline project,  multilingual.

Dr. Josep Martí is a Scientific Researcher at the Milà i Fontanals Institute (Barcelona), which makes up part of the Spanish National Research Council, otherwise known as “CSIC.” He has conducted fieldwork in different European countries, in Japan, and most recently in Equatorial Guinea. His research interests include, as reflected in his numerous publications,  the anthropology of the body, the anthropology of music, and popular culture.

Special Events at the Society for Ethnomusicology 2016 Washington D.C. Conference

The SEM conference is almost here! Hopefully you remembered to register, found a hotel roommate to save you some green, and have already read the program book cover to cover out of excitement for this mid-semester vacation.

Since we all have to make up our minds about what events we plan to attend while in DC at the SEM conference, Jennie and Heather are here to make it easier for you! We’ve listed below a few events/meetings/panels we plan to attend as well as updates on a few events that have been sold out. We encourage you to go through the program and take advantage of as many opportunities as you can! More details on specific performances can be found here.

**Quick update: Thank you to those who have suggested more great things for us to see and participate in during SEM. We’ve added these suggestions (in purple).**

Survey on Decolonizing Ethnomusicology for the SEM Student News

Participate and lend your voice to the upcoming issue of SEM Student News, Vol. 12, No. 2, which focuses on decolonizing ethnomusicology, by filling out a survey for the “Student Voices” column. “Student Voices,” operating in conjunction with the SEM Student Union, provides a space for ethnomusicology students to voice their thoughts and concerns in relation to each issue’s topic. As such, your participation is invaluable and vital to this venture, and your opinions and ideas submitted through this survey will be brought together and represented in editorial form within the issue and put in dialogue with other contributions. There is still time remaining to take part in the discussion, but the survey is only open until end-of-day tomorrow, Saturday, October 1, so please follow this link and spread word to your colleagues!

photo source: http://www.rcschools.com/survey.cfm

What a summer!

I am currently on a very short vacation at home, and, certainly I’m not the only one who feels this way, but it is tough to budget two weeks worth of time with friends and family before turning around and starting back again at school.

Ethnomusicology and Parenthood

Since its inception, I have been an avid and enthusiastic reader of the “Parenthood and Ethnomusicology” blogs. A father of a three-year-old and a PhD Candidate, I have found great comfort and a sort of virtual camaraderie with the others in our field who, like me, are continually in the process of figuring out how to be both parents and ethnomusicologists.

The Ten Tracks Project & the Vertiskos Project

The SU blog is very excited to announce some new projects and directions we are taking. On the initiative of Ana-María Alarcón-Jiménez, our blog is now on SoundCloud and YouTube!

Professional Dress: The Suit-speriment

At the beginning of this year, I wrote about a little experiment my colleagues and I conducted regarding professional dress. To recap, many of the graduate students in the University of Maryland’s ethno/musicology division have teaching responsibilities, and we were noticing an increased discussion about what we wear while teaching classes and taking classes. The idea of business-casual attire had come up a number of times, and I wanted to know what would happen if we all dressed in such clothes for two weeks, although some kept the experiment going a bit longer.

Dissertation Thoughts

I can’t stop freaking out about my dissertation, and I’m starting to enjoy that fact.

Some of you may have noticed that postings on our blog have been a little scant recently. We sincerely apologize for that and are continuing work on many awesome projects. The reality of the situation is, however, several of us have just finished thesis writing or are currently in the throes of dissertation writing, and for me at least, this has led to some strange occurrences in my life. I mentioned in a previous post how I had become convinced I needed to shunt health and sleep to the side in order to finish the dissertation. I have to admit that as much as writing that blog post did help me get some perspective on what I’m doing and why, I still have days where I feel like I’m not doing something right if I haven’t had at least one nervous breakdown. And that has led to another problem: I’m starting to enjoy this process.

Dissertation Thoughts

One thing I didn’t learn in my now 20+ years of education was how to write a dissertation. Fellow students and professors have told me not to think of the dissertation as the end; it’s not my life’s work but only the beginning of my life’s work. I know they mean well, but whilst deep in the throes of dissertation writing—when my thoughts are sticky and globby, when I can’t understand the article I just read, when I’m not making sense to myself anymore—I think, “And this is only the beginning?!”

In a way, though, this kind of encouragement is misleading. The dissertation is an end of sorts. It’s the culmination of years of study, research, and fieldwork. It’s a liminal space (oh no, that word!), a place of becoming. One final rite of passage as a student. And as such, it’s freaking me out.