Indonesia

Many Americans have potent memories of their early years in music classrooms, squeaking out the melodies to patriotic tunes or outdated popular music hits on a plastic recorder. Even as a musician who studies music education as the subject of my Ph.D., most of the particulars of elementary school general music class have faded from my memory.

This post comes from Chris Foertsch. Chris is a recent MA graduate from Oregon State University in Anthropology, currently in Indonesia on a Fulbright Research Fellowship to conduct preliminary fieldwork for his PhD, beginning 2018 at University of Victoria, BC. Besides ethnographic research interviewing, he likes cycling, exploring cities on foot, and drinking strong coffee.

Our post this month comes from Andrea Decker, a second-year graduate student in ethnomusicology at UC Riverside currently working on her Master’s Thesis on infrastructure and gender in dangdut music videos. When not listening to dangdut or collecting ghost stories, Andrea knits, sings, plays tabla, and does Crossfit.