2017 Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado
–interviews conducted and filmed by Kelly Bosworth and Jennie Williams;
video editing by Jennie Williams
Dr. Shannon Dudley, Associate Professor in the School of Music at the University of Washington, discusses how ethnomusicologists incorporate participatory music in the academy, his work with the Seattle Fandango Project, and the Artist in Residence program at UW.
Dr. Daniel Sheehy, Curator and Director, Emeritus at the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, former Director of the National Endowment for the Arts Folk and Traditional Arts program, and former Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Dr. Sheehy discusses his encounters with public-sector ethnomusicology including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and the role as ethnomusicologists to help understand the meaning of music within communities.
Dr. Guilnard Moufarrej, Assistant Professor in the Languages and Cultures Department at the U.S. Naval Academy, discusses her applications of ethnomusicology and music while teaching during her Arabic classes.
Dr. Rebecca Sager, Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at Florida A&M University, discusses voting issues, her service in the League of Women Voters, and her research on civil society in Haiti.
Dr. Miriam Gerberg, Founder of the Minnesota Global Arts Institute and adjunct instructor at Hamline University in the Music Department, discusses her experiences presenting, programming, and collaborating with musicians and artists in the community.
Dr. Olivier Urbain, Director of The Min-On Music Research Institute, discusses his work in Japan and the commonalities shared between the ethnomusicology and the peace studies fields.
Dr. Matt Sakakeeny, Associate Professor at the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University, discusses community engagement with his students and his involvement with social justice issues in New Orleans.
Huib Schippers, Curator and Director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, discusses his past and present applied ethnomusicology research.
Dr. Svanibor Pettan, Professor in the Department of Musicology at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, discusses his early work, the establishment of a university course in applied ethnomusicology at the University of Ljubljana, and other applied research trends pursued through SEM and ICTM. Dr. Pettan also reflects on his recent work as co-editor with Dr. Jeff Todd Titon on the 2015 publication of The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology.
–Jennie Williams
Photograph courtesy of the American Folklife Center; used with permission from the family of Bess Lomax Hawes.
Bess Lomax Hawes wrote in her memoir, Sing It Pretty, that her mother taught her the Latin motto, “Faciendo ediscere facere,” which means, “By doing, you learn to do” (Hawes 2008). Advocacy in ethnomusicology widely relates to this idea that we learn the skills we need to know while on the job and our work fulfills the values expressed by the people with whom we work. We study conventional models that came before our work and then modify them as needed to achieve our goals. Bess Lomax Hawes adopted values and practiced her skills while paving the way for future professionals in the field and institutions of ethnomusicology.
Born in Austin, Texas on January 21, 1921, Bess Lomax Hawes spent her childhood living in the countryside of east Texas. Her father, John Lomax worked for the Library of Congress collecting folk music in the United States. At a young age, Bess would observe him and her older brother Alan Lomax work while she occasionally helped by recording and transcribing songs. At the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of Congress, she assisted her father editing Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads (1941), a collection of songs compiled by John and Alan Lomax. Hawes gained a sophisticated understanding of folk music at an early age.
After graduating from Bryn Mawr College in 1941 with an undergraduate degree in Sociology, Hawes moved to New York City and joined the Almanac Singers along with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Her knowledge of the Library of Congress repertory was a great contribution to the musical group. Hawes wrote the M.T.A. Song, which later was made famous by the Kingston Trio. She was politically active, working for the Office of War Information while performing music. She married Butch Hawes in 1943 and eventually had three children: Corey, Naomi, and Nicholas.
In 1951, Hawes and her family moved to California where she served on the faculty for California State University at Northridge. During her time in academia, she conducted research and produced a number of documentary films, including Georgia Sea Island Singers (1964), Buck Dancer (1965), Pizza Pizza Daddy-O (1967), and Say Old Man, Can You Play the Fiddle? (1970). In 1970, Hawes received her M.A. in Folklore at the University of California Berkeley under Dr. Alan Dundes.
In 1975, Ralph Rinzler, founder of the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, invited Hawes to participate in the festival and present on arts traditions of California. Rinzler then invited Hawes to serve as assistant director for presentation at the 1976 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Nancy Hanks, art historian and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) offered Hawes a position at the NEA to manage the “Special Projects Program,” which predated the establishment of the Folk and Traditional Arts Program. Hawes accepted and began her new job on January 2, 1977.
Hawes started with a small staff, but by the time she retired in 1992, she had increased the division’s budget from $100,000 annually to $4 million, and the staff from one to six (Murphy 2015). During her tenure as the director of the Folk Arts Program at the NEA, she helped establish state-based folklife programs in 50 of the 56 states and territories, created the State Apprenticeship Initiative, and started the National Heritage Fellowship awards program. The first NEA National Heritage Fellowships were awarded in 1982 during the Ronald Reagan administration and since then over 400 artists have received this award. The NEA Heritage Fellowship has recognized famous musicians such as B.B. King (1991), Bill Monroe (1982), Chuck Brown (2005), Mavis Staples (2006), Flaco Jiménez (2012), Clifton Chenier (1984), Rahim AlHaj (2015) and Ella Jenkins (2017) as well as artists of a variety of traditional forms.
Bess Lomax Hawes was inquisitive and evaluative. She asked critical questions about her role and the responsibility of ethnomusicologists and folklorists concerning the funding and support of traditional folk arts. Her example has taught us that we must remain cognizant of presidential administrations and the power of diverging values and politics. Not only did Hawes tour many states and visit communities, she also served under presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush, Sr., and learned to talk to politicians, finding ways to include folk and traditional arts in the national conversation. Hawes valued quality work, and she advanced the infrastructure in place to protect and help folk and traditional arts to thrive even during times of recession. She valued the willingness to be flexible with folk arts program design so that the funding and support could withstand any economic or political obstacle.
Bess Lomax Hawes received the National Medal of Arts in 1993 and her advocacy work significantly impacted the projects and research ethnomusicologists conduct in the U.S. public sector today. Her accomplishments are celebrated and her name is memorialized through the student paper prize at the Society for Ethnomusicology as well as the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Award given annually to one NEA Heritage Fellowship recipient. Her lasting influence on the development and support of folk and traditional arts programming in the U.S. continues to be a meaningful and understandable demonstration of ethnomusicological advocacy.