Global Engagement Minor, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
Global Engagement Minor, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
While completing my thesis, Water All the Way Down: An exploration of the Ompompanoosuc River through practices of deep listening and narrative soundwalk composition, I encountered the work of Amanda Gutierrez, a scholar and artist at the forefront of contemporary sound studies. Her writing, featured within the anthology Soundwalking through Time, Space, and Technologies, greatly impacted …
Professor Saida Daukeyeva’s text Musical Instrument as Sentient Being, presented in the Entangled Sounding Objects music seminar, prompted me to grapple with the concept of ecomusicology in Central Asian musical tradition. It is not a term that I had previously encountered, and I found the text’s presentation of this term and its subsequent theoretical impacts …
In the fall of 2024, I had the exceptional opportunity to participate in the Central Asian Music Ensemble in dialogue with the seminar Entangled Sounding Objects. The ensemble featured the Kazakh qyl-qobyz (bowed lute), dombyra (plucked lute), jetygen (plucked zither), saz-syrnai (clay ocarina), asatayaq (wand with bells), danghyra (frame drum), and the Kyrgyz temir ooz komuz (jaw harp). The course, offering practical instruction in musical traditions from post-Soviet Central …
The Wesleyan Chinese Music Ensemble, directed by Joy Lu is made up of a variety of traditional Chinese instruments, including plucked lutes and zithers, hammered struck zithers, bowed fiddles, and bamboo/reed flutes. Participating in this course provided me with the opportunity to explore the modern Chinese ensemble and a variety of Chinese musical styles. Specifically, I …
Participating in the Wesleyan performance course West African Music and Culture has allowed me to gain perspectives on the dynamic and diverse traditions of West African music through the study of song, rhythm, history, and language. Specifically, this course has grappled with fundamental themes such as the representation of West African music, its role in …
My independent study for the demonstration of Nepali language proficiency in the spring of 2024 explored the role of music and ritual within Limbu culture and the religious practices of Kirati Mundhum. For the purpose of this exploration I stayed in Dhungesaghu, a village located within Taplejung, the first district of Nepal. This region comprises …
Water Songs, Documented. December, 2024. The final project for the music seminar Entangled Sounding Objects asked me to synthesize my study of music in Kazakhstan. Intrigued by ideas of musical instruments as vessels for archival capability, my composition Water Songs, Documented records a river in Thetford, Vermont through naturally and intentionally produced sound. Featuring the …
