EthNoise!

The Music, Language, and Culture Workshop

May 19: Olha Kolomyyets

A thrilling year of intellectual engagement is winding to a close. Please join us for our final EthNoise! workshop of the year this Thursday, May 19, at 4:30 in Goodspeed 205. Olha Kolomyyets, PhD, Ethnomusicologist, Professor at the Musicology Department, Ivan Franko Lviv National University (Ukraine), Liaison Officer of  International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) in Ukraine, Fulbright Scholar at the Department of Music, University of Chicago (2015-2016), will present a paper titled “The Musical Journey of A Ukrainian Ethnomusicologist at the Turn of the Millennium: A Very Short Introduction.” 



Abstract: 
“Starting my journey in Ukraine at the very beginning of a new Millennium, I passed different paths, moving from encounters inside my country to the outside musical world: studying native musical culture during the first years of Ukrainian independence and revival (cultural, spiritual, educational) in the country, exploring musical cultures of ethnic minorities in different regions of Ukraine (in particular Armenian and Volokhi (Bajeschi) communities) and their correlation with local Ukrainian culture; and moving on, crossing the Ukrainian border for a field work research covering the stylistic school of Kirana singers in the context of professional music of the oral tradition of Northern India, which became a topic of my dissertation.

As a Fulbright Scholar, studying the basic methods of learning and researching traditional musical culture of other (unrelated, foreign) ethnicities in academic and performance settings in the US, I consider this a new period and one of the most important turning points in my musical and scholar journey. In my presentation I describe the crucial encounters that happened on my way, the researches that led me to my current project in the United States and made me reconsider the best achievements and intentions of Ukrainian ethnomusicologists during the developing of the discipline in the beginning of 20th century, which often were not realized in corpore due to different political and social obstacles. Those researches also caused me to ask and consider many questions, among them why studying the musical culture of foreign ethnicities, the area scantly developed in Ukrainian ethnomusicology, but considering the historical, social and cultural contexts, remains extremely urgent. That is why, opening borders for world musics, is important for a Ukrainian ethnomusicologist in the Age of globalization to keep the balance between solving urgent questions in the study of native musics for “not to lose much what is close to home” [Bohlman, 2002], and, on the other hand to look for the appropriate tools and fruitful discussions with the colleagues from abroad because of “the need for intercultural understanding” [Hemetek, 2009] in its broadest sense.”



As always, we will meet in Goodspeed 205 at 4:30 pm, and we will provide food and drink. Please join us for our final talk of the year!

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