Fieldwork Research on Music in Vietnam

East Asia has long been one of my geographic areas of specialization, but recently personal interests have extended to the southern parts of China (Quanzhou: Nanyin music and the maritime Silk Road) and even into the southernmost part of this region: Vietnam. 

It has been a great experience to visit Saigon for the second time this year for an additional period of fieldwork research on both local Mekong Delta traditional music and intercultural experimental music (combining Vietnamese and avant garde western electronic music techniques).

Vietnam is experiencing rapid social and economic changes across recent years and is a nation with rich and unique cultural heritage, including a fascinating array of musical instruments. I have also been learning much from serving as a reviewer for the new PhD dissertation “The Choreography of Gender in Traditional Vietnamese Music” by Nguyễn, Thanh Thủy, a master performer of the dan tranh who later studied artistic research in music at Lund University, Sweden.

The outstanding Swedish research team that I am working with in Vietnam is making high-quality sound recordings and will be releasing a full professional album and producing various publications from this project.

Relevant links: http://www.thesixtones.net/

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/55919/477368

P.S. Pictured above is an idyllic image of the Vietnamese countryside, but most of this project is spent in a recording studio in the densely populated, noisy, and rapidly-growing Ho Chi Minh City.

Reviews of Music Glocalization Book

There have already been some positive reviews of our book from 2018, Music Glocalization: Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age, and it is cited in recent publications by scholars in Cyprus, Poland, Norway, and the Czech Republic. Additionally, my co-editor Mikolaj Rykowski has been favorably reviewed for a promotion, with this book as a significant part of his portfolio. 

Below are some excerpts from the recent reviews of our book:

According to leading glocalization theorist Victor Roudometof, “The volume displays remarkable thematic coherence, which allows the editors to use the material presented within individual chapters in order to build broader theoretical arguments. In its conception and execution, this volume is a noteworthy effort to insert the problematic of glocalization into the disciplines of musicology and ethnomusicology … The author advances the notion of being ‘glocalimbodied’ (2018:6), a neologism that combines ‘glocal’ with ‘limbo’ in order to make sense of an unbalanced condition attributed to glocal forces as well as the necessity of situating the body within the newfound condition of personalized branding strategies … The editors’ synthesis of the volume’s research is highly original and represents a good point of departure for thinking further about the uses of glocalization in musicology” (Victor Roudometof, Ethnomusicology Review, 2019).

Source: https://www.ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/content/review-music-glocalization-heritage-and-innovation-digital-age

According to Professor Wai-Chung Ho (Hong Kong), “This book offers a critical study of the undertheorized concept of glocalization, intertwining the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ forces between music and society, both past and present … the book provides a fresh amalgam of perspectives that address music-related subjects. It also covers diverse topics from theoretical perspectives on local and global identities of music, art music composition in the digital age, glocalized music beyond Europe, and glocalized music professions… This book is the first comprehensive account of how the notion of ‘glocalization’ may be useful in rethinking nationality in music and the use of local musical traditions that serve as a means for global strategies. It reconstructs the emergence of music in the global context and provides an innovative framework for studying how glocalization transforms aesthetic hierarchies and cultural transmissions, thus breaking new ground for musicology and the sociology of music” (Wai-Chung Ho, Cambridge Scholars blog, 2018). 

Source: https://cambridgescholarsblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/08/book-review-music-glocalization-heritage-and-innovation-in-a-digital-age/

Here is a link for reviews of my other books:

http://sociomusicology.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-review-update-2015.html

Honorary Professorship in Hong Kong

It was a great pleasure to officially learn today that I have been appointed Honorary Professor with the Department of Culture and Creative Arts at The Education University of Hong Kong.

This university has become one of the world's leading institutions in the field of education, and it is especially making important contributions in East Asia, where education has long been highly valued.

Here is a link to the university’s website: https://www.eduhk.hk/main/

I eagerly look forward to further collaborations with the outstanding colleagues in Hong Kong.

Tabula Rasa Choir Peace Program Tour

Professional choir Tabula Rasa will perform a series of concerts at three locations in western Norway in mid-October, 2019. The program is entitled Peace (“Fred” in Norwegian), and features the theme of sacred music facing war memorials. The program is designed to stimulate reflection on the consequences of war and whether it is enough to dream of peace.

The program features music by Orlando de Lassus, Arnold Schönberg, Arvo Pärt, Frank Havrøy, Jake Runestad, and the premiere performance of a new piece by Tord Kalvenes. 

This project is supported by the Norwegian Arts Council, the Norwegian Composers Association, and the Norwegian Composers Fund. 

Here is the schedule and other details (in Norwegian): 

14. september
Krigminnene på Fedje, minikonsert kl 15
Fedjekyrkja, konsert kl 17

15. september 
Nordsjøfartmuseet i Tælavåg, minikonsert kl 15
Sund kyrkje, konsert kl 18

22. september 
Herdla museum, minikonsert kl 15, 15.30 og 16. 
Herdla kyrkje, konsert kl 18


Musikalsk leder: Arild Rohde 

Sopran: Rikke Lina Sorell Matthiesen, Sigrun Jørdre
Alt: Elise Thorgersen Varne, Zsuzsa Zseni
Tenor: Tord Kalvenes, Arild Rohde
Bass: Charles Lindberg, David Hebert

Regi: Ingrid Askvik

Lys: Matias Askvik

Non-Western Educational Philosophy

UPDATE: This PhD course was offered entirely online in late May and June 2020. It was a great success, with very positive evaluations and strong student projects that will likely lead to publications. The course will be offered again two years later, in 2022. Please plan to join us! 

Here is an article about the 2020 course:

http://www.norwaynews.com/benefits-of-shifting-to-online-learning-during-pandemic-a-story-from-norway/

In late May 2020, we will offer a new PhD course in Bergen entitled Non-Western Educational Philosophy and Policy. This intensive interdisciplinary course is situated within our PhD program in Bildung and Pedagogical Practices (European educational philosophy), but it is also open to doctoral students from other universities for ECTS (European) credits.

Below is the course description and a link for additional information.

This course enables educational theories and practices in contemporary Europe to be more deeply understood in relation to non-Western educational philosophies and policies. The focus of the course is on exploring intellectual traditions and sociocultural practices that shape school education outside of Europe, in the continents of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. It offers a survey of non-European philosophical writings on education, including such major historical theorists as Confucius, Ibn Khaldun, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Ghandi, Zera Yacob, Tagore, Fanon, Nishida, Said, and Freire, as well as intercultural observations of notable contemporary educational and social theorists: Michael Peters, Martha Nussbaum, Nuraan Davids, Yusef Waghid, Carl Mika, Amartya Sen, Seyla Benhabib, Timothy Reagan, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Joel Spring, Nicholas Burbules, Carlos Alberto Torres, Fred Dervin, Mark Halstead, and David Killick. The course will especially emphasize discussion of East Asian schools, due to both the distinctive philosophies and recent economic and educational achievements in China and Japan. Students will also explore the implications of non-western philosophical traditions for their particular school subject areas of specialization (e.g. arts education, social studies, citizenship education, physical education, etc.).

Further details: https://www.hvl.no/en/studies-at-hvl/study-programmes/course/29/phd911

As discussions linked below demonstrate, at many institutions there has been some debate surrounding the movement to “decolonize the curriculum”, but in my view the most valid argument for offering a course on these thinkers is that it enables us to better understand intellectual heritage from many parts of the world, and to better learn from each other. The course does not "replace" anything, but it certainly contributes to a more complete higher education, and stimulates us to rethink basic assumptions concerning the nature, value, and implementation of educational systems.  

https://www.soas.ac.uk/blogs/study/decolonising-curriculum-whats-the-fuss/

https://discoversociety.org/2019/02/06/navigating-the-decolonising-process-avoiding-pitfalls-and-some-dos-and-donts/

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190213074031552

Sharq Taronalari XII in Samarkand

In late August I will be visiting spectacular Samarkand, Uzbekistan to give a speech for the musicology symposium affiliated with the 12^th International Music Festival Sharq Taronalari.

This year’s symposium is called Prospects for the Development of Traditional Musical Art of the Eastern People, and my speech, entitled “World Music Pedagogy: Presenting Central Asian Traditions to the World”, is related to some ongoing writings for the World Music Pedagogy book series on Routledge.

The purpose of my presentation is to introduce Campbell’s WMP model and demonstrate how this innovative approach may be applied so Central Asian music traditions are effectively shared with foreign audiences, thereby broadening global appreciation and understanding of Asian musical heritage.

The Sharq Taronalari festival attracts extraordinarily skilled traditional musicians from across the world, as well as prominent music festival managers and ethnomusicologists. I am very thankful for the opportunity to be invited to this great event and look forward to meeting creative musicians from Uzbekistan and other countries. 

Link to the festival website:

https://www.sharq-taronalari.uz/

Video from a previous Sharq Taronalari festival (starting from 5:35):

https://youtu.be/KfFVPPiQj6I?t=334

Here is a link for video from the 2019 opening ceremony, with brilliant music and dance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt_rUSPJlgE&feature=youtu.be&t=4320

International Cultural Policy Courses

Across the past two weeks, PhD students from several countries joined the course I taught for Bergen Summer Research School entitled Cultural Policy: Arts Heritage and Sustainability. We included some excellent guest lecturers, such as Mary Miller (Director of Bergen National Opera) and Norwegian scholars Tore Sætersdal (anthropologist) and Ole Marius Hylland (policy analyst).

The PhD students came from Germany, Brazil/Sweden, Canada, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Africa. We are now developing a book based on these two international cultural policy PhD courses held in 2018 and 2019.

Links for more information:

https://www.uib.no/en/rs/bsrs

http://sociomusicology.blogspot.com/2018/10/sustainable-development-and-cultural.html

Next week I teach a course entitled Arts Policy in the Twenty-First Century for law students in China’s leading law faculty, China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL), Beijing.

In the Autumn, a new PhD course that I developed will finally be offered in Bergen at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. It is entitled Non-Western Educational Philosophy and Policy.

Link for more information:

https://www.hvl.no/en/studies-at-hvl/study-programmes/course/phd911

PLEASE NOTE: PhD students from other universities are welcome to take these exciting intensive courses in Bergen -- in English -- for ECTS European transfer credits. 

Although music, education, and global studies continue to be the major themes in my research and teaching, I am increasingly interested in devising improvements to the ways that governments support arts and cultural heritage through various kinds of institutions.