Ethnomusicology Forum: UCSB ABD Graduate Student Series New series highlights work and research of PhD candidates To promote a sense of community during remote instruction, and to give graduate students a chance to present their work in a public forum, the UC Santa Barbara Ethnomusicology Program created a new lecture series, the UCSB ABD Graduate Student Series. As part of the UC Santa Barbara Ethnomusicology Forum, the series aims to highlight the work and research of UC Santa Barbara Ethnomusicology students who are nearing the end of their Doctor of Philosophy degree program, and have completed all requirements with the exception of the dissertation (ABD, or “All But Dissertation”). With in-person events prohibited due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lectures in Winter Quarter were presented via Zoom. PhD candidate Jason Busniewski kicked-off the series on January 27 with a lecture titled “Bagpiping in the Garhwal Himalayas: Music Theory and Analytical Approaches to a South Asian Tradition.” Busniewski wrote of his talk: “Since the instrument was first introduced to Britain’s Gurkha Regiments in the late nineteenth century, the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe has been adopted, adapted, and indigenized to become a key part of the soundscape of India’s Garhwal Himalayas. While South Asia’s Hindustani and Karnatak classical musics have been subject to large amounts of close musical analysis and music theoretical study, the region’s popular and ‘folk’ musics, including those of rural Garhwal, have been largely ignored in these respects, in part due to a shift in disciplinary priorities within the field of ethnomusicology. “Following the work of Michael Tenzer and Gabriel Solis, this talk explores the possibilities of music analytical, computational, and music theoretical approaches to understanding the processes through which Garhwali musicians have indigenized Scottish bagpipes in the context of preexisting musical practices and what such approaches can contribute to the broader ethnomusicology of South Asia’s music traditions.” PhD Candidate Jason Busniewski
Jason Busniewski is a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara, where his dissertation research investigates the indigenization of the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe in India’s Garhwal Himalayas. He is also an avid fiddler, performing and teaching traditional music from Ireland and the American Upper Midwest. Read more here. 12 | UC Santa Barbara Department of Music | Spring 2021 Newsletter
Garhwali bagpiper
