Also on the summer schedule:

A 4th of July concert with the Trio in Ancona, Italy kicks off a European tour with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra featuring vocalist/guitarist John Pizzarelli in tribute to Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington. The tour will include stops in Villingen-Schwenningen (July 7), the North Sea Jazz Fest (July 8)- featuring Dutch vocal star Trijntje Oosterhuis, The Gran Canaries Jazz Festival (July 9-10), Cordoba Guitarra Festival (July 11) and the Festival Da Jazz in St. Moritz (July 13.)

On July 24-30 Tamir Hendelman will travel to Port Townsend, Washington’s CENTRUM JAZZ WORKSHOP for a week of workshops and concerts with the Jeff Hamilton Trio and fellow faculty such as Paquito D’Rivera, John Clayton and more.

Tamir returns to Southern California in August for concerts with a quartet led by brilliant guitarist Graham Dechter and the world-class rhythm section of John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton. They will then record Graham’s second CD, which will also feature a half dozen arrangements Tamir collaborated on with Graham.

Finally, Tamir is conducting a series of workshops on the Great American Songbook in Southern California- for musicians, students and music fans- centered around improvisation, accompaniment and arranging.

Jesse Sachs is a 4th year Ethnomusicology major, world music concentration, and producer of the JazzReggae Festival 2010 and 2011. He also produced a short documentary about the 25 years of the JazzReggae Festival, A Celebration of 25 Years: A Review of the JazzReggae Festival at UCLA. Jesse says, “This festival is a monumental achievement of UCLA students for the past 25 years presenting a wide arrange of Jazz, Soul, Hip Hop, Reggae and World Music….I think this is very relevant to the ethnomusicology community, being that UCLA is home to the largest student run music festival of this kind in the country. ” A link to the documentary is: http://vimeo.com/23837535.

Donna Armstrong interviewed him about his experience producing the festival.

The 25th Annual JazzReggae Festival 2011 will take place on Sunday, May 29 and Monday, May 30, Memorial Weekend, on the UCLA Intramural Field. For information go to: http://jazzreggaefest.com

Q: How did being an ethnomusicology student prepare you for producing the JazzReggae Festival?

Jesse Sachs: Studying ethnomusicology has allowed me to think about music in deeper ways then most programmers or promoters do. Having a deep understanding of the music you work with is important if you are going to present it and spread it to the public. Not only has it refined and broadened my taste, but it has given me a greater knowledge of the cultural implications of music. My study of ethnomusicology has given me an intellectual and ethical foundation on which to promote the music I do to the world. Anthony Seeger also gave me some great wisdom as my advisor for Ethno 195 course.

Q: What things were you not prepared for? What things did you have to learn on your own?

Jesse Sachs: When you first take on a position of producing an event of this size, you basically have to give up the idea that you can be prepared for everything. There are constant surprises and challenges that come along with concerts, but that’s also why the work is fun and dynamic. To many people’s surprise the JazzReggae Festival actually is all produced by students. Both CSP and ASUCLA provide advising and some guidance, but decision making mostly comes down to the student producers. Because of this, there is a lot that you have to learn on your own, often times the hard way. The biggest learning experience one gets working on the festival is how to deal with many different personalities. We have to deal with a vast array of people, from the diverse vendors, to eccentrics and egos in the music industry, to the many fans that call into the office every day. There is no better way how to learn how to deal with different people than to get out into the world and do it.

Q: What do you plan to do when you graduate?

Jesse Sachs: I do not have any set plans yet, but I intend to help build innovative projects in music and art. At UCLA, I have definitely found that my passion is to facilitate the spreading of music that I love.

Q: Do you have any advice for other ethnomusicology students who might be interested in this type of work?

Jesse Sachs: I did not think that I would have gotten the experience that I have from UCLA when I came in as a freshman. I couldn’t have imagined putting on a 25,000 person festival, or working with my musical heroes. My advice to other students is to take advantage of all that UCLA and Los Angeles have to offer. If you love music, you are in the right place to make things happen.

photo courtesy of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

It’s a rare opportunity for any musician to perform at L.A.’s prestigious Walt Disney Concert Hall. It’s even more exceptional when the performance is given by student musicians playing in a university orchestra. But on April 16, Bruins will make history both ways when the UCLA Philharmonia performs at the Hall by invitation of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

As the flagship orchestra for the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, the 75-year-old UCLA Philharmonia is composed primarily of music majors interested in a career in musical performance. Each year, these student musicians perform a full spectrum of symphonic, operatic and music-theater repertoire.

Founded in 1936, Philharmonia’s music directors have included Lukas Foss, Richard Dufallo, Mehli Mehta, Samuel Krachmalnick, Alexander Treger and Jon Robertson. This year marks the sixth season under dynamic music director and conductor Neal Stulberg.
Also director of orchestral studies, Stulberg observes that Philharmonia has emerged “as one of the finest training ensembles in Southern California.”

Before the honor of playing Disney Hall, the orchestra had performed at high-profile venues such as Royce Hall, the Getty Center’s Harold Williams Auditorium and the L.A. County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater. Since 2005, the Philharmonia has also accompanied staged UCLA Opera productions, including Falstaff, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Threepenny Opera and Carousel.

UCLA Philharmonia: Sounds About Town
Saturday, April 16 at 8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall. Tickets: $36, $31, $27, $15 @ UCLA Central Ticket Office. Visit the School of Music website for more information.

As Part One of a concert series titled “Sounds About Town,” the orchestra’s performance celebrates the 50th anniversary of UCLA’s Ethnomusicology Department. The cross-cultural presentation will notably feature Danzón No. 4, one of several works inspired by the dancing of Mexico’s Veracruz region, composed by Regents’ Lecturer Arturo Márquez. The performance will journey around the world to include Middle Eastern, Chinese and American jazz pieces.

While the program’s main purpose is to showcase the Ethnomusicology Department, Stulberg also emphasizes its significance to the musicians.

“The orchestra has risen to every challenge I’ve put before them, including concerts with world-class, internationally renowned conductors and performances in remarkable off-campus venues like the Getty Center,” he says. “But playing a concert at Disney Hall represents an even higher pinnacle of achievement.”

What first strikes me about John Cale as he comes onstage is his hair. A full rainbow of color sits atop his head. And these colorful locks bestow an unearthly quality to an otherwise unassuming figure. Having acknowledged our applause in kind, soft-spoken words, he bangs out a D minor chord at the keyboard and the orchestra begins to tune.

After microphone levels have been established, rehearsal proceeds rapidly—Mr. Cale is business-like efficient in the warmest way possible. Soon we are awash in an endless plain of mostly bright chords and melodies, stopping only occasionally to stumble over a few notes, a difficult rhythm, or a tricky entrance. Rehearsal ends a good hour and a half early. I like this Cale guy.

Much of this music is about groove. Cale’s drummer looks the part; he seems entranced by his own infectious backbeat. As for me: I’m all but dancing in my chair. I can’t help it. How much groovin’ is too much? During the concert the audience appears, to me, quite stationary. Does this display of obedient attention reflect a certain reverence for the legendary musician? I feel that bobbing heads and dancing feet would better serve the cult of Cale—at least during the more upbeat tunes. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly moments for motionless enchantment; in Half Past France the expanses of soft blue and orange sound over which the guitar rhapsodizes, raga-like, recall the meditative realm of minimalists La Monte Young and Tony Conrad, Cale’s old-time collaborators. I’m losing myself in the resonance…such is also my feeling as we conclude the set with grand, fortissimo chords and Cale singing the somewhat ironic words, “sleep…sleep…sleep, Hedda Gabler.”

* * *

At the end of the night a few orchestra members posed for a quick photo with Mr. Cale. During this brief encounter I introduced myself to Mr. Cale, though I regret not having made a proposition to him, and so I’ll inscribe my plea here:

Dear Mr. Cale,

Please take me on tour.

Sincerely,

Joshua Addison

Some student comments about the John Cale concert were:

“It was an amazing experience playing with one of the most established rock musicians of our time. The featured guests were on fire and it was great to meet and hang out with them. I hope to do some more stuff like this in the future.”

– Goni Eshed, MM Music Performance, Trumpet.

“I played at the John Cale’s concert which was an amazing experience that I would definitely never forget.”

–Boryana Popova, final year doctorate student in violin performance.

“The Jazz Orchestra performed at the 1st Annual Jazz Education Network Conference, which was held at The University of Missouri – St. Louis, May 20-22, 2010. Our performance was on the final day of the conference, Saturday, May 22.

Here are the names of the students who participated:
Saxophones (L to R) -
Miles Freeman
Nathan Kersey-Wilson
Mark Einhorn
Kim Brueckner (partially obscured)
Tahl Klainman

Trumpets (L to R) -
David Segwick
Jack Kent
Derek Ganong
Jon Bhatia
Daniel Richman (not pictured)

Trombones (L to R) -
Russell Bowerman
Alan McFarlane
Rachel Woods-Robinson (partially obscured) Will Baker

Piano – Mike Greenwood (not pictured)
Guitar – Andrew Longaker (not pictured)
Bass – Ryan Mahlstedt
Drums – Forrest Mitchell
Voice – Kana Shimanuki (not pictured)”

Read all about her concert in the following English language reviews:

http://en.ammonnews.net/article.aspx?articleNO=6312

http://www.jo.jo/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1210:sound-of-history-nicole-taylor&catid=77:culture&Itemid=176

‘
ADITYA PRAKASH performing at the 2009 Mehfil at the Freud Playhouse

The importance of Mehfil to UCLA students: Many students here at UCLA have learned an Indian Classical art form, but due to the academic stress from university life they do not have the time or motivation to keep in touch. With the opportunity this concert affords to perform the music they have studied, students are inspired to rekindle their interest in music and dance. Additionally, the concert gives students a chance to perform or showcase their talent. Other students who will be performing on Tuesday have been learning Indian Music through UCLA’s Ethnomusicology department.

The audition process: Since there are many students at UCLA who have training in Indian Classical Arts, auditions were held for the upcoming Mehfil event. The accepted participants were then required to compose a piece for the show. Some composed original pieces’ others created pieces inspired from an existing composition. What we found was that this process of creating music and dance not only brings out the creative spark in these artists, it allows them to use their musical minds in ways they may not be accustomed to.

What to expect at Mehfil: There will be many dancers collaborating with different styles of Classical Indian dance. One of the musical acts will be South Indian Classical vocal styles along with Flamenco and Turkish music played on the acoustic guitar along with tabla. This piece, along with many of the other acts, has been composed specifically for this concert.

What goes into producing Mehfil: The practice sessions to create these sort of pieces usually require hours of just experimenting and learning more about the other styles involved. Once a certain connection is made between the varying styles an attempt can be made to solidify the structure of the piece. If some musicians are lucky, they notice the points of similarity and contrast right away and can compose a piece very quickly. Otherwise, the process for composing a completely new piece in a short time is very demanding. This experience enriches the musician and dancer and gives them a sense of pride in their artistic ability.

Aditya Prakash is an organizer of this year’s Mehfil performance. When he’s not pursuing his studies at HASOM, he’s blogging at http://adityaprakashmusic.blogspot.com/

And while many members of the film’s creative team—director James Cameron, actress Sigourney Weaver, film composer James Horner—are familiar names in the upper echelon of Hollywood’s elite, perhaps one of the unsung heroes of the film just may be Los Angeles ethnomusicologist Wanda Bryant.

On Saturday, January 25th, students from Tom Grasty’s UCLA “Internet Marketing & Publishing for Musicians” class sat down with Dr. Bryant to talk about her role on the film and what it was like to work side by side with James Horner, one of the industry’s most prolific and successful film composers.

By the time the interview concluded, it was evident that her knowledge and insight into myriad of cultural musical landscapes did more than simply help Horner shape the mesmerizing musical world of Avatar—they defined it.

So how did you get involved with Avatar? That’s probably the funniest story of the whole thing. In May of 2007, I decided it was time to clean out my junk e-mail folder. I started looking through just casually to make sure I wasn’t throwing anything important away. And one of the e-mails—I didn’t know this person—said ‘feature film consultation.’ And I thought, cynically, “Oh yeah right, they’re coming to me.”

But you opened the e-mail? Something piqued my curiosity. So, yes, I opened the e-mail, and I started reading. I didn’t recognize the sender’s name. But the e-mail said they were working on the new Jim Cameron film, and James Horner would like to work with an ethnomusicologist. Would I be interested? So I looked down at the bottom of the e-mail and I recognized the name of the production company—Lightstorm—so I thought, “This actually sounds legitimate.” And so I called the phone number, and within two minutes I was talking to Jon Landau, the producer of the film.

How long was that mail in your junk mail before you found it? Luckily not very long, maybe two days. Life lesson: Don’t just empty your junk e-mail folder without checking every single message.

So how does Hollywood find an ethnomusicologist, anyway? They found me through Cal Arts, where I teach the world music series. Cal Arts has a big world music presence. So they went to Cal Arts and said, “We want the ethnomusicologist who has the broadest background.” That was me. So Cal Arts gave them my e-mail address and it ended up in my junk e-mail folder.

And how long before you were actually working on the film? I think I read the email on a Tuesday. Friday I was in Santa Monica watching early footage of the film with James Horner.

And what was the first thing they showed you? A promo reel. It was really rudimentary at that point— just the motion capture images, and some of the early computer-generated images. But the one thing that really knocked me out was the little seeds that float down out of the trees. That was the first thing that was really true 3-D in the film that I saw. And it was like, “Wow, you can reach out and touch them like they were just going to land on your hand.” All of us were watching it in amazement, asking, “How did they do that?” It was obviously 3-D, but it was so much different than the 3-D we were used to seeing with spears and rocks coming at you out of the screen. This was just all encompassing. You just forgot that you were in a theatre.

Another thing that was all encompassing was the music. Talk a little bit about your contribution. Well, James Horner has an extensive background in world music. And after talking with him, I was actually very surprised that he wanted to consult with someone because he knew so much already. But they were looking for someone with a really broad knowledge of all different kinds of cultures.

A ‘broad-minded’ ethnomusicologist, so to speak? That’s right. Most ethnomusicologists tend to specialize in one small area— a genre of music or a specific geographical area. The producers didn’t want that. They wanted someone who could bring in really unusual sounds. James [Horner] told me he wanted “music that no one had ever heard before,” music that would not be easily recognized by the average movie-going audience. And in today’s world that’s difficult. We all know what a gamelan sounds like and we’ve all heard music from China. They were looking for a generalist with broad knowledge. I teach very specific seminars on geographical locations which has led me to delve more deeply into certain cultures, especially into minority musics, but I also teach a survey course, so I’ve got a really broad knowledge. Not to mention a very extensive CD collection. Ask me for unusual sounds and I can find them. In fact…

Bryant reaches into her bag and pulls out a CD.

I have few of those sounds right here. These are just a few of the examples that I took to him [Horner].

The first track on the CD begins. As Bryant speaks, she speaks over a series of tracks, forwarding them so that other tracks accentuate the music style she is referencing.

Some of the examples I brought in were from a woman named Susanne Rosenberg who does these beautiful Swedish cattle herding calls that are phenomenally gorgeous. I took in South African mining songs, girls’ greeting songs from Burundi, Bolivian aerophones, singing from Comoros Islands (between Madagascar and Mozambique), Värttinä, which is a Finnish female singing group, voices from the Naga culture in Northeast India.

So you have all these wonderful musical cues— how did the selection process work with James Horner? I would just play examples. I’d hit track one, and James would sit there with his eyes closed. After five or ten seconds he’d say, “No.” I’d go next track. “No…no….aww, I like that. I like that. What is that? Where’s that from? Save that one.”

James Horner’s been doing film music composition for a long time, not mention won a lot of awards in the process. How was he to work with? I got along beautifully with James. We’re very close in age; we have very similar kind of taste; and we have similar sense of humor. Let me tell you, long about 10:00 o’ clock at night, after you’ve been there since 8:00 am, if you don’t have a sense of humor, boy, you’re in big trouble. Yeah, some very long days but very eye opening.

And when did you involve the director, James Cameron? Through the process of elimination we came up with this CD I’m playing you, which contained 25 examples. We then gave the CD to James Cameron. He is one of those directors who really wants to be involved with the music. A lot of directors will just say, “Here’s the film, you go do it and come back to me when you’re done. But Cameron wants to be involved every step of the way. So we bounced ideas off him constantly.

And what was his selection process? From these 25 examples, he narrowed it down to six. He’d say things like, “That’s too weird, or that’s too recognizable, or no, that doesn’t fit.” Then based on those examples we started to talk about different song structures, ways of not using the exact recording, but using it as an inspiration to create something new.

More like something out of this world, really. Or from another world, right.

So how did you create those otherworldly sounds? We played around with different vocal timbers. So when I called singers in, I called them specifically for their vocal timbre and for their vocal agility. Because we were looking for some really unusual ornamentation, and the ability to sing microtonally, we wanted specific timbres, specific ranges, and things like that. James then blended them all.

Sort of like a global ‘mash up’? He didn’t want any one particular vocal timbre, because that tends to be a little bit more recognizable. Here’s an African singer— yeah obviously. Here’s a Chinese singer— heard that before. So when he hired the singers for the final sound track he had a chorus of people with African sounding voices; he had a chorus with very European sounding chorus; he had a very Asian sounding chorus. And then he blended them all together so there’s no one specific timbre that sounds like anything you hear normally.

But the voices came from somewhere. How’d you get them? For our demo recording sessions, I called the vocal coaches at Cal Arts, told them what I was looking for, and they recommended certain singers. Once in the recording studio, we played various recordings for them. Then I said, “Can you sing like that?” A couple of them turned pale, but we gave them about 10 minutes to work things out on their own. Then we said, “Ok, let’s hear what you got,” hit the Record button and they started doing all this interesting stuff.

And did that surprise you? That they were so improvisational? Not really. You know, a lot of studio musicians will come in and say, “Where’s my music? Where’s the notation?” So we went for kids who were really on the cutting edge and very open to unusual things like that. They loved playing around in the studio, they loved to improvise, and they were thrilled to be involved.

So are those the voices we hear in the film? No, those recordings were done very, very early in the process. What we recorded became the source of inspiration for Horner. Only a couple of pieces ended up in the film intact. Almost everything was manipulated in some fashion. Even the orchestra’s timbres were altered. And it’s not just James Horner [doing that] today. Most film composers today are playing around with their sounds.

Why do you think that is? A lot of it is because we’re at a point in history where there’s been so much that has been done. So many films have been scored; so many melodies have been written. James worries about this issue constantly. You run a real strong risk of plagiarizing, whether it’s someone else or your own stuff unthinkingly. So composers are now beginning to manipulate things because they know they can come up with an unusual, unique sound.

You spoke a moment ago about the integral role of bringing together seemingly disparate voices. Can you talk a little bit about the words? The words came from [USC professor] Paul Frommer and Jim Cameron. Paul Frommer’s the guy who created the language. So when we were singing words, we were singing Na’vi words. We were singing in that language. It’s really hard to sing because it has glottal stops and ejectives and really unusual ways of making sounds. So Paul actually taught the language to the singers. And Jim Cameron wrote the words. He wrote a poem for song lyrics and Paul translated them to Na’vi, then we sang them.

Wait a minute, back up—us? [laughs] I sang on a couple of little places, but luckily my voice was well-hidden behind the “real” singers!

If we can return to James Cameron’s involvement for a moment. Were you familiar with, or were you introduced to any philosophy Cameron may have incorporated into the story? For Cameron, it’s really an expression of trying to be in touch with the environment. That’s his whole thing. He doesn’t really have a political message in there that was intentional. It grew out of his respect for the environment. That was his philosophy, that we should all be that connected with the environment— and to show how greed can totally destroy something that is beautifully balanced.

You talked about how technology is such an integral force in creating the music we hear today. However, the Na’vi society is very primitive. How did you reconcile that? That’s a great question. We always wanted to keep the people grounded in their world, so what that meant is we had to understand the way they live. [With regard to the Na’vi] we thought about aboriginal cultures here on earth.

How do primitive societies create music? Well, to begin with there’s no metal working capabilities for most of them. So their gear, tools and weapons are constructed from natural elements in the environment. That means there aren’t going to be very complex instruments, nothing that would require metal or a long period of time to create. Vocal music is central to most aboriginal cultures, and so it is with the Na’vi.

So is that why you spent so much time developing a Na’vi vocal tradition? That’s correct. And my task was really researching vocal qualities and different kinds of song structures that would work with this kind of culture and would work in their environment.

Like vocal calls? Vocal calls are good because they carry a long distance in the forest. People can be a long distance apart and still hear each other. So that rooted the musical structure in the way this culture and the environment of Pandora works.

There are, however, some very distinctive instruments. The drums are particularly memorable. Drums are often one of the first instruments to come about in a culture. You can make them out of trees or almost anything you have. Drums work perfectly for the Na’vi because the language that Paul Frommer created has these really cool ejectives and glottal stops that translate perfectly into drumwork.

But the drums served another purpose, too, didn’t they? Ah, the drum signals, based on African talking drums. Such a neat concept. So I sketched out all these drum patterns and rhythms based on Na’vi words to be used as warning rhythms. This was one of the concepts that did not make it into the film, but was fleshed out for the book James Cameron’s Avatar, a tangential project on which I worked directly with writers Dirk Mathison and Maria Wilhelm, and Jim Cameron.

How did you go about creating the ‘Na’vi music’? Did it just happen? Was it something that you had planned before the fact? James and I definitely discussed song structures and modal possibilities. Do you know the concept of “music of the spheres” [from Pythagoras and Plato, concerning theoretical sounds created by the movements of bodies in the universe]? We transposed this to the moon of Pandora and the all-encompassing force that is Eywa, the Na’vi divine spirit. We recorded men singing this moving, oozing, flowing microtonal drone, representing Eywa’s spirit. Then over the top of that, the women have these beautiful, really high soprano cascading vocal lines that are sung in heterophony.

It sounds like so many of your initial ideas made it into the film. What there anything that didn’t make in? Actually, the majority of our work did not appear intact, but the essence of those sounds were utilized to create the lovely colors of Pandora. Partly because the film was initially very long, many scenes of Na’vi life (including music) had to be cut. The Na’vi culture emphasizes visual arts over music, especially woven things. Weaving is really big in their culture, [as well as] an important artistic expression for them. The Na’vi have big looms, which are tree size and that 5-7 people work on at time. We did record a weaving song, specifically at the request of Jim Cameron, but unfortunately, it got cut too. I knew when we were in trouble when I heard the movie was over 3 hours long. You can’t have a film that’s 3 hours long. It’s not commercially viable. And there were parts that, while crucial to the culture of the Na’vi, were not crucial to the plot of the film.

What kind of drums were used? There were numerous drawings and ideas for drums. And there was this one really cool one modeled after Taiko drumming. It’s a spherical set of drums that literally is in a ring, and each of the drums represents one of the planets in Pandora’s solar system. They’re all different sizes and are in the exact position in relation to the others. The drums are suspended high in the air from the trees, and there’s a guy who hangs in the middle and swings around and plays all these drums. Another set of drums was constructed with gigantic drum heads attached to the sides of trees, several feet in the air. The Na’vi swing back and forth on trapezes or swings between the trees and use the trapeze itself as the drum stick: “boom” on this side and “boom” on that side.

Speaking of ‘working,’ how does someone get a job as a music consultant on a feature film? Is there any training for that sort of job? Did you train for it? There was no relationship whatsoever to my dissertation, [except] that it taught me to do very thorough research and look in every corner. Don’t overlook something because you think it’s only tangentially related. If you think it has even a shred to do with what you are looking at, go look at it. It might take you to a whole different world.

Like the world of Avatar, perhaps? Exactly.

It sounds like a fantastic experience. Just the opportunity to get to work for those people, to get to go inside the film world, was such a delight! I’ve taught about music and film for so long, but this was the real thing.

Sounds as if jobs like this don’t come along that often for an ethnomusicologist? No question, composers probably have more of an opportunity.

Why do you think that is? Because composers can create something that reflects a particular culture. A composer can say, “Ok, we’re dealing with Native American tradition. I understand Native American tradition. I know the musical elements that make up their music. I can write something that replicates that sound.” As far as someone like me going out and saying, “Ok, I have an ethnomusicology degree. I am going be a film music consultant”—no, that’s not going to happen. The reality is that there really isn’t a job description for a film music consultant. It’s not one of those things that come along regularly enough that you can focus on it as being a career goal. It’s one of those things that if you are in the right place at the right time, it’s great. But don’t focus your curriculum on becoming a film music consultant.

But if you can do it, I guess there’s nothing like starting at the top, right? I’m still in shock to think that my name will forever be linked with probably what will be the biggest movie of all time. How bizarre is that? Pretty astonishing that a girl from Iowa who moved to California to study Peter, Paul and Mary, ended up on Pandora.

Any final thoughts? I guess if I had to sum up my role, I’d say I’m the muse. Because I’m not a composer, it was my job to bring the ideas. And what’s really gratifying now is when I listen to the soundtrack, I can say “A-ha! That’s where it came from!” I know where that sound originated, where the idea for that sound came from.

And now, so do we. Thank you for your time, Dr. Bryant.

Wanda Bryant earned her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from UCLA in 1995. Her dissertation, Virtual Music Communities, was the first in the field of ethnomusicology to utilize the internet as a research site. Her areas of interest include the music of China, Indonesia, and the Balkans; organology; and popular music culture. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and has taught at all grade levels, from kindergarten to graduate seminars. She currently teaches the World Music series at CalArts and is an adjunct assistant professor in the Performing and Communication Arts Department at Pasadena City College. She is a contributor to James Cameron’s Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora, which is available at Amazon.com.

The students of “Ethnomusicology 188: Internet marketing & Publishing for Musicians” are: Joseph Buchanan, Ryan Guffey, Mia Kagaya, Ji-Won Kim, Lauren Michelle, Aditya Prakash, Parviz Rahmanpanah, Dan Shimizu and Carlos Toro.

This interview was conducted by: Joseph Buchanan, Mia Kagaya, Lauren Michelle and Parviz Rahmanpanah. Edited by Tom Grasty.

Steeped in folk music from birth, she was the youngest child of John A. Lomax and Bess Bauman Brown. Born Jan. 21, 1921, in Austin, Texas, she was home-schooled by her mother, who also taught her to play piano. Her father and her brother, Alan Lomax, collected seminal field recordings of traditional songs that had been sung by cowboys, prisoners and slaves. After her mother died in 1931, the family moved to Washington, D.C., and Hawes assisted her father’s pioneering research compiling the folk song archive at the Library of Congress.

In 1952 Bess and her husband, an artist, moved to California and settled with their children in Topanga Canyon, immersing themselves in the bohemian community anchored by actor Will Geer. Besides performing in coffeehouses and at music festivals, Hawes taught guitar, banjo, mandolin and folk singing through UCLA Extension courses, at the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program and, starting in 1963, at San Fernando Valley State College. Bess taught at Idyllwild Arts from 1958 through the mid 1960s.

Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje is professor and chair of the Ethnomusicology Department at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Professor DjeDje is author of the 2008 book, Fiddling in West Africa: Touching the Spirit in Fulbe, Hausa, and Dagbamba Cultures, which won the Alan Merriam Prize. The award, given by the Society for Ethnomusicology to “the most distinguished published English-language monograph in the field of ethnomusicology,” was announced in November of 2009 – the latest honor for Professor DjeDje, who has been on the UCLA faculty since 1979. The recipient of two awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Professor DjeDje is also the author of Distribution of the One String Fiddle in West Africa, American Black Spiritual and Gospel Songs from Southeast Georgia: A Comparative Study, and Black Religious Music from Southeast Georgia (a recording with accompanying booklet). Professor DjeDje, who received her doctorate and master’s degree from the school’s Ethnomusicology Department, has conducted research throughout West Africa and the United States. She spoke with students who were taking a Fall 2009 music journalism course (Ethnomusicology 188, Lecture 3) at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Professor DjeDje talked about the future of ethnomusicology, her past research, how her ‘60s activism helped propel her scholarly career, and other subjects. The interviewers were Joseph Buchanan, Christopher Robinson, Ji-Won Kim, Jennifer Li, and Jeehai Song.

Ji-Won Kim: Can you describe when you first discovered ethnomusicology – when you realized that this was something interesting?

Professor DjeDje: I suppose everyone has this epiphany for ethnomusicology, because we don’t grow up in our lives saying we’re going to become an ethnomusicologist. We may talk about becoming a doctor and lawyer and maybe even a journalist, because these professions are around us, but who wakes up in the morning and says, “I’m going to be an ethnomusicologist”? Even in high school, you don’t say that you’re going to be an ethnomusicologist. So it’s later in life. In my case, it was when I was a junior at Fisk University – a historically black school in Nashville, Tennessee. Even though Fisk was founded in 1866, as an only-black school, throughout its history, there was very little about African or African-American culture that was a part of the music curriculum. It was really a Western curriculum, like most schools. Even still today, at historically black schools, if you go to a Fisk or a Morehouse, it’s not very different from coming to UCLA in terms of what you study. So, when I was at Fisk, this was the time of the civil rights period. I’m a child of the ‘60s. I entered Fisk because it was supposed to be an excellent school for piano concert music – and I wanted to become a concert pianist.

Have you heard of Stokely Carmichael? He was the leader of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). He came to Fisk my freshman year, and we were all excited and going out to protest and march, and this and that. And the police were surrounding the university. I was so excited. I went into my dorm and called home, and said, “Daddy, daddy – I’m protesting! I’m protesting!” And he said, “Child – you better go into your room and get underneath your bed.” (Professor DjeDje and the class laugh.) Somebody was shot during that protesting. Even though we did it and were excited about it, it was sometimes dangerous. But as a result of him coming to Fisk during that freshman year, many of us thought that changes needed to occur within the curriculum. And so all of us began to agitate for change within the music curriculum.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were there. They are well-known for introducing the spiritual – an African-American art form – back in the 1870s. But basically that was it. They sang the spirituals, but there was nothing in the curriculum. As a result of our agitation, in my junior year, Fisk invited Darius Thieme to teach a course on African music. He was an ethnomusicologist – he did research in Nigeria, and studied there for two or three years before writing his dissertation. He was originally from the United States. He taught a course one quarter on African music, and then another quarter on music of the African diaspora. That just blew my mind. While growing up in a small town, and playing in a church, playing classical music, you’d snub your nose up at anything that was not classical. We privileged European classical music. And anything that was not that was not good. So to see all of that within the context of the university was special because it gave African music a certain amount of legitimacy that I had not experienced. So I asked Dr. Thieme if this was something you could really study, and he said, “Yes.” And I said, “Where? How?” And he said, “Ethnomusicology.” And when he saw that I was serious, he said, “If you’re serious about it, then you need to go to UCLA, because they have the major program for ethnomusicologists.”

So in my senior year I applied, and I was also able to get a nice grant – a fellowship that paid for my training for five years. So, I came here. Actually, Fisk was ahead of its time. I think it was one of the only schools – except for UCLA – in the entire United States teaching courses on African music and the music of the African diaspora. This was in 1967. At UCLA, the ethnomusicology department didn’t add courses on African-American music until about 1967. Fisk was ahead of its time.

Joseph Buchanan: So this experience gave you an appreciation and pride in your own music and Western African traditions?

Professor DjeDje: Definitely. And I suppose that most people who are not from the European tradition probably had pride to be able to go to a place like a UCLA or anywhere else in academe and study the music of their traditions. Bringing it to the academy – that wasn’t easy, I’m sure, at certain schools. UCLA was important because we had people like Mantle Hood. He received his M.A. here in composition. After finishing his M.A., he went to the Netherlands and studied with Jaap Kunst and received his Ph.D. focusing on the music of Indonesia. And then he came back here and began to develop courses in performance. He was a composer and was probably interested in figuring out ways to write music, and he needed to have the sounds and all the resources here. So he began to introduce various cultures, primarily from Asia – Indonesia; Thailand; China; Korea; Japan. This was the ‘50s and early ‘60s. And then starting in 1963, 1964 and 1965, he began to invite people from other parts of the world to work here – from Africa and also Persia, the Philippines.

He became friends with a man by the name of J.H. Kwabena Nketia. He was invited here in 1963 to teach a course during the summer with the African Studies Center. James S. Coleman, who was director of African Studies, invited Nketia to teach this course. That’s when Nketia and Hood established a relationship, even though they had met each other previously. But eventually, Hood was invited to the University of Ghana to study the music there. After going to Ghana, Hood made the film, “Atumpan: The Talking Drums of Ghana,” and meeting some of those individuals, he decided to bring some of them back to teach African music at UCLA. Hood was a remarkable person. As someone with that kind of vision, he was able to get support from major foundations to bring in people. He caused UCLA to be a major player in terms of education. He had an interesting personality. Whenever he walked into a room, everyone knew he was there.

Joseph Buchanan: As you look back on the enthusiasm that went into building UCLA’s program, and you look at the current state of ethnomusicology – does the field still have that enthusiasm? Is there still a lot of work to be done, or has most of the groundwork been done already? What new can be added to the field?

Professor DjeDje: There’s a whole lot that can be done. It’s only a drop in the bucket of what we’ve accomplished. Now that ethnomusicology has become a part of the academy, it has begun to embrace some of the approaches and methods and theories of the academy, and that’s fine. But there are also individuals who are still trying to make cutting-edge changes. There are certain barriers that still probably need to be broken. Here, at UCLA, because of our history of innovation, and always thinking differently, we’re probably in a good position to do that. I suppose the area where there seems to be interest in doing things is the creative area. To me, it’s almost as if we’ve gone full circle.

You had someone like a Hood who came in from composition, and probably became interested in all these new musics, these new sounds, because he wanted to integrate that into his work. That was important for him, but ethnomusicology has always been regarded as an academic tradition. In other words, you actually do research and write articles and books and eventually we began to make films, and that was accepted, but it’s been much more academic. And ethnomusicologists, here in the United States, have been pulled from anthropology, so the discipline has always had the culture focus, fusing ideas with anthropology. Ethnomusicologists study music and culture, so American ethnomusicology has had a focus on culture, whereas in other parts of the world, there has been a little more focus on music. The whole idea of studying music came from Europeans. People who were performers or composers were not always well-accepted within the discipline. The person who’s behind Africa Meets North America, Akin Euba – one of the reasons he did this is that, as a composer, he didn’t feel that he was accepted within academe or ethnomusicology. He’s a graduate of UCLA. His degree is in composition, similar to Hood. And whenever you talk to people about using composition as a way to explore issues related to the world, rather than just through the academy and writing, you hear, “Oh, yeah – that’s good. But does it really belong? What could you actually say? How would it contribute to our greater understanding of issues related to the field?”

Euba has told me that whenever he wrote proposals to present something on ethnomusicology at conferences, they were not always accepted. If they were accepted, they were not scheduled on days when you had the most people there. It may have been put on Sunday, the very last day, when there are very few people. I don’t think organizers do that intentionally, but as program chair, you look at what most people are interested in. In any case, that’s when Euba decided to do his own thing. He came up with all these ideas of creative ethnomusicology, intercultural ethnomusicology, and this AMNA is a reflection of that interest.

This idea of creativity – looking at world music as a basis for being much more creative – those are areas that need to be broken now. We are interested in that. We just established a new undergraduate curriculum two years ago, and students can now choose either performance or composition as an emphasis. People can now choose public ethnomusicology. That’s another area that was marginalized. People thought that if you go into ethnomusicology, you need to go into the academy. If you’re going into, say, arts administration or anything that had to do with the public, you might hear, “That’s OK, but that’s not real ethnomusicology.” There’d be a snub on that. Our undergraduate curriculum has made these major emphases, recognizing that these paths are just as important, and they need to be emphasized so that students who are interested in these areas are not discouraged because they’re not doing ethnomusicology. Actually, we want them to be encouraged. Some of our students have gone into museum work. Some are going into archives. Some are going into government. And as the world gets smaller, with so many diverse people around, I think you need to have someone with a background in ethnomusicology to come up with new ways of working with people.

Jennifer Li: You were classically trained as a pianist. Have you ever trained as a classical violinist?

Professor DjeDje: No. The reason I became involved with the violin was because of my daughter. She was a violinist, and she started with the Suzuki method, when she was about five or six. Originally, she started with piano because I was playing piano and teaching her. Then, a teacher who came to her school introduced the violin. And his idea was to provide lessons for all the students at the school. She took lessons for that year. This was a private school, and they weren’t able to bring in the person again the next year, and there were not enough people willing to pay the lessons, so the program didn’t continue. She said, “I really want to play the violin.” Suzuki allows you to play the instrument early, rather than the traditional Western way of teaching violin, so I identified a violin teacher who was Suzuki-trained, and she took violin. That became my interest in the violin.

Noteworthy is the fact that playing the violin was something that she wanted to do but her friends questioned why she wanted to learn the violin, because her father is from West Africa. “Why aren’t you learning drumming,” they asked. “Why aren’t you dancing, or doing this” – the stereotype of following in the tradition of her father, and asking why she was studying this Western European instrument. And I said, “Wait a minute now – the violin is not only Western, it’s African; it’s global.” And I’d done all this research on the West African violin. That’s when I said, “Why don’t I make my research on the violin more available to the world?” I wanted to do a cross-cultural study, looking at the African violin as well as the role of the African-American here in North America. It dates all the way back to the 17th century.

Interestingly, Africans were the people who played the violin here in North America. Whites didn’t always play the violin, because they saw it as work, and it was the Africans who did the work while the whites were there for the entertainment. Some Europeans taught their slaves violin, and Africans performed at settings or balls for them. So the violin was probably the most dominant instrument in African-American culture, up until the early 20th century. During slavery, it was more popular than the banjo, which actually came from Africa. So, with all this history, it was important for my daughter to feel comfortable – to have legitimacy in the eyes of her peers. She could say, “This is not necessarily Western. I am following my heritage by studying the violin.” So that’s how I became interested.

I’m not a violinist, except for the time that I was in Ghana and I was studying the violin. I was studying the gonje as part of my research, for about a year. But I’m a keyboardist. So those of you who play instruments, transferring the keyboard to the violin is not very easy.

Joseph Buchanan: Since your studies have taken you to West Africa, and you’re head of the Ethnomusicology Department, and with everything else you do, do you still have time for your classical piano playing?

Professor DjeDje: No. Not at all. When we had this (Africa Meets North America) conference here, it made me realize how much I miss playing the instrument. Being in academe, with scholarship, administration and teaching, it just does not allow me time to perform. I haven’t been able to find a balance. This is one of the things I’m looking forward to when I retire – to devote my time to playing piano because, now, there’s just so much more repertoire available on Africa and African-American music.

I’m sure there were compositions before, but they were not accessible. People wrote their compositions, but no one was interested in publishing them. So you didn’t know anything about it unless you contacted the person and said, “Send me your manuscript,” and maybe you’d pull together the manuscript so it’s legible, so you could perform it. But now, there’s just so much available. Publishers are publishing it. So it would be fascinating to go back and look at what’s there and learn it. Even just playing for myself, rather than playing for an audience – I look forward to doing that.

Joseph Buchanan: Since you had experience in the classical world as a young person, and experience as an ethnomusicologist in West African traditions, do you find that it takes the same or equal amount of formal training and dedication to learn a one-string African fiddle and classical piano?

Professor DjeDje: I think it’s dedication all around. To me, it’s the individual – if you’re really going to take something seriously, whether it’s a classical instrument or even a popular instrument, you have to be dedicated. I have a standard of excellence, and I sometimes am hard on myself because I’m trying to achieve excellence. And people who work with me may say, “She’s very demanding.” (Laughs.) But it’s not “demanding.” I believe that one should do their best, and the only way to do your best is to really be committed to doing that. So, yes, there’s this dedication.

When I studied the violin in Africa, I discovered they began learning the instrument in a way that’s very informal. In the part of Africa where I did my research, there were families of musicians, and therefore, you’re born into this family. You’re expected to learn this instrument. When the child is born, they may even hear the playing of the instrument at their naming ceremony, and when they’re introduced to the community. From when they’re about two or three years old, they’re given an instrument – even though they’re not playing it, they’re supposed to go through the motions. Eventually, they’re supposed to learn the repertoire, learn the language – this is required. So very early in their lives, this becomes something they’re supposed to do, like eating and drinking – which is different from what we do here. We separate the two. We get up and we eat and drink and do this, and then we do our instrument, either for work or pleasure. In that particular part of the world, it’s a part of who you are as a person within that community. So, yes, there’s dedication and a commitment if you really want to excel.

Jeehai Song: In Korea, there’s the same emphasis, where families stress the playing of instruments that way, so that the playing is a natural part of their day.

Professor DjeDje: It used to be that way in many parts of the world. When I was doing my research on music in early America, I came across a culture of family musicianship. The fiddle was a popular instrument – this was after slavery – and you had, by that time, blacks and whites performing in these sort of fiddle bands. And you had children of different generations in a family who are performing the instrument. Sometimes, they used it for pleasure. There was not TV. There was not any of these technological entertainments, so they entertained themselves by playing musical instruments. Sometimes, they’d play for the community – house parties or barn dances or perhaps there’s a major festival that takes place every year. So early in those families, children learned how to play instruments or learned how to perform the repertoire. So I think this is probably global.

Today, we separate musicianship as a profession and not as an experience, and we say, “That person is going to be a performer. He or she has the talent and dedication to be a performer.” A person who is very good with math and science will be pushed to become a scientist or to enter the medical world. Today, you don’t think about allowing the person to do both if they wanted to do both. There’s this separation. In another time, you could do both. Sometimes people in the sciences were excellent musicians, especially in terms of theory. I had a friend, when I started at Fisk University – I was a piano major and she was an exceptional pianist, and she was debating about whether she was going into math or piano. In the end, because of family pressure, she went into math. But out of all the people in my class, she was the best pianist. But she never did major in piano, because there was this separation.

Jeehai Song: In Ghana, where you did research, did you give advice on preserving their musical traditions?

Professor DjeDje: Whenever I go to a different part of the world, I try not to go in as if I’m the savior. I go in as someone who wants to learn. The people there are the authority and I want to learn, so I can share it with other people – so they’re pretty much using me as a mouthpiece to make other people more aware of what they’re doing. It’s the individuals there who need to take responsibility for preserving it and maintaining it in whatever way they want. But you find that whenever someone like me goes into it and begins to recognize a tradition’s importance, people do take on that responsibility.

A good example is when I went back to Ghana in early 2000, and I interviewed one of the Dagbamba fiddlers I had researched, and he told me that he had started an archive. I said, “Really?” And he said, “Yes. All of these Europeans and people coming from the United States asking for this music – it must be important, so perhaps I need to be able to save it.” And I said, “How are you archiving it?” And for them, it’s the text, the song text that is important. Because the song text actually dates back to the 1700s, when Dagbon was just coming into existence as a political state, when the fiddlers had just entered their culture. And it was the song text for them that was very important – they thought it was easy to learn how to play the instrument. But once the texts were lost, and the people who performed them were gone, there was no way to recover it. So what he’d begun to do is interview some of the senior people in his community, the elders within the family, and he’d begun to ask them to sing songs that they don’t normally perform, and wrote them down. He was Western-educated himself. He said, “The young people may not be interested now, but at some point in time, they will be interested, and I’ll have the material for them.”

He lives in a very small village in northern Ghana, and he’s been writing down these song texts for the future. Whenever I record and document – I use tapes – I give copies to the musicians and their families. I give copies to the university where I was, and I also deposit material in the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. In that way, the materials are preserved. But I think it’s really the responsibility of those individuals rather than me going in and saying, “You need to do this.” To me, that’s one of the problems of the West, which is always going in and imposing their ways of doing things, and their values of things. And some people there believe it, and then the traditions of the native countries – that helped them to survive in their own way – they disappear.

Joseph Buchanan: You must have been upset by the theft of instruments at UCLA. Can you talk about that?

Professor DjeDje: I have a personal attachment to the instruments. I’m a graduate of UCLA, and I came here in 1970. I was around when a lot of these instruments were purchased. So you knew some of the people who were responsible for purchasing them. It’s always an interesting association when you make contact with individuals who either make instruments for you or purchase them for you. You get to know them, you establish rapport, and there are special students here in the department, and faculty, who were involved in the process. It just brings back memories. There’s this nostalgia that I have. It’s like taking something from your home that’s always been there.

Christopher Robinson: Last week, we got Professor Rice here, and he talked about some of his guilty musical pleasures. What do you listen to for fun and entertainment?

Professor DjeDje: I like gospel. I love gospel music. All types of gospel. It calms me, gives me strength. Sometimes when I come to work, I like to listen to classical music – Western classical music. I love to hear the music of Chopin and Beethoven and some Bach, which takes me back to when I was a student. I still play that myself. When I’m going home, in the evening, I like to put on KJLH. I want to hear some R&B. I have a diverse musical palette.