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Influences Of Musical Experience On Absolute Pitch Memory, Mia A. Guzman May 2026

Influences Of Musical Experience On Absolute Pitch Memory, Mia A. Guzman

Music Honors Projects

Absolute pitch (AP), colloquially known as “perfect pitch,” is the ability to identify or recreate any musical note without an external reference tone. While many believe AP is an exceptional, innate musical talent, I argue that AP is a continuous ability influenced by experience. Using a mixed-methods approach that combined behavioral tasks with interviews, I examined AP memory in AP possessors and non-possessors with varying musical backgrounds to understand how experience-based factors, such as language, primary instrument, and the onset and style of musical training, might influence individual performance on established AP measures.


Hearing Caste: Dalit Resistance Through Folk Music In West Bengal, India, Antara Bhattacharyay May 2025

Hearing Caste: Dalit Resistance Through Folk Music In West Bengal, India, Antara Bhattacharyay

Music Honors Projects

Caste—a graded structure of hierarchy—has historically shaped identities in South Asia and persists to this day. In opposition, Dalits (caste-marginalized communities) have utilized diverse mediums to communicate their resistance. In this thesis, I analyze the role of music in Bengali Dalit resistance through the work of Dalit singer-songwriter Smritikana Howlader (b. 1960). Based on ethnographic research, I investigate how folk music becomes a mode of Dalit historiography. In particular, I explore how Howlader aims to transcend caste boundaries through song, evoking shared humanity. I argue that Howlader’s performances combat dominant caste discourse and Dalit erasure, furthering Bengali Dalit resistance.


The Sounds Of Home: A Composition Portfolio, Paul Gabriel L. Cosme Apr 2022

The Sounds Of Home: A Composition Portfolio, Paul Gabriel L. Cosme

Music Honors Projects

What does home sound like? I have spent most of my recent life outside my homeland, the Philippines, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, and this question of what home is has become a persistent thought, if not, a necessary inquiry. This composition portfolio attempts to answer that question in three varying pieces. The first, The Sounds of Home, is a string quartet in three movements where each one tells a personal story by invoking Filipino folk and indigenous themes. The second, Commuting in Manila, is a wind septet that sonically emulates the commuting experience in Manila from the …


King Behind Colonial Curtains: Kasilag And The Making Of Filipino National Culture, Paul Gabriel L. Cosme Apr 2022

King Behind Colonial Curtains: Kasilag And The Making Of Filipino National Culture, Paul Gabriel L. Cosme

International Studies Honors Projects

Filipino National Artist Lucrecia “King” Kasilag sought to preserve folk cultures and melded these with her Western training to produce works—scholarly, pedagogical, and compositional—that shaped national music and culture. This thesis is a critical biography that combines perspectives from postcolonial studies, political economy, and musicology to highlight forces that shaped Kasilag’s life while illustrating her successes and shortcomings on national culture. Through this biography, I argue, Filipino national culture must originate from intersectional struggles and negotiation among elites and masses; that this culture is about both resistance and acceptance—a national culture that is syncretic and quintessentially dynamic.


Review Of The Great Game In The Buddhist Himalayas: India And China’S Quest For Strategic Dominance By Phunchok Stobdan, Noé Dinnerstein Nov 2020

Review Of The Great Game In The Buddhist Himalayas: India And China’S Quest For Strategic Dominance By Phunchok Stobdan, Noé Dinnerstein

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Review Of Mountainous Sound Spaces: Listening To History And Music In The Utarakhand Himalayas By Andrew Alter, Jason Busniewski Nov 2020

Review Of Mountainous Sound Spaces: Listening To History And Music In The Utarakhand Himalayas By Andrew Alter, Jason Busniewski

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Giving God Glory: How Christian Tharus Negotiate Belonging Through Ritual Music In Nepal, Victoria M. Dalzell Nov 2020

Giving God Glory: How Christian Tharus Negotiate Belonging Through Ritual Music In Nepal, Victoria M. Dalzell

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

In Nepal, ethnicity is often constituted through ritual practice. If ritual participation is a key way of exercising membership in an ethnic group, how might Christians--who no longer participate in many community rituals--demonstrate their belonging in ethnic communities? In this article, I argue that modifying traditional songs and dances for a church context is one way that Christian Tharus continue to identify with their ethnic communities within a multicultural Christian community. I examine two Christian Tharu performances: performing the huri nāc (a Kathariya Tharu song and dance genre performed during Holi) at interchurch events and arranging an original, Nepali-language hymn …


Bodies In The Margins: Refiguring The Rebetika As Literature, Sophia Schlesinger Apr 2020

Bodies In The Margins: Refiguring The Rebetika As Literature, Sophia Schlesinger

English Honors Projects

This thesis engages a literary analysis of a corpus of songs and recordings known as the rebetika (sing. rebetiko), which prospered in the port districts of major cities throughout the Aegean in the early 20th century. Engaging the rebetika as literary texts, I argue, helps us understand how they have functioned as a kind of pressure point on the borders between nation and Other. Without making unproveable biographical claims about the motives of the music progenitors, I examine why so many have reached for the rebetika as texts with which to articulate various political and cultural desires. Using a …


Review Of Recasting Folk In The Himalayas: Indian Music, Media, And Social Mobility By Stefan Fiol, Victoria M. Dalzell Dec 2018

Review Of Recasting Folk In The Himalayas: Indian Music, Media, And Social Mobility By Stefan Fiol, Victoria M. Dalzell

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


The Political Potency Of Tibetan Identity In Pop Music And Dunglen, Anna Morcom Jun 2018

The Political Potency Of Tibetan Identity In Pop Music And Dunglen, Anna Morcom

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

Since their beginnings in the 1980s, Tibetan pop music and dunglen (lute songs of northeastern Tibet) have shown strong expressions of Tibetan identity. They also represent a flourishing area of Tibetan language cultural production. This is significant after the repetitive propaganda songs of the Cultural Revolution and given the pressures and restrictions in Tibet on language and religion in particular. However, in this article, I critique straightforward interpretations of the Tibetanness of Tibetan popular music as representing a zone of assertion or resistance, arguing instead that the political potency of Tibetan pop music and dunglen is far more double-edged, coopted …


Making A Living As A Musician In Nepal: Multiple Regimes Of Value In A Changing Popular Folk Music Industry, Anna M. Stirr Jun 2018

Making A Living As A Musician In Nepal: Multiple Regimes Of Value In A Changing Popular Folk Music Industry, Anna M. Stirr

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

This article examines the moral and material economy of “being a musician” (Neuman 1980) in Nepal’s popular folk music industry, which includes the broad genre of lok gīt (folk song) and the more specific subgenre of lok dohori (folk duet song). Through ethnographic attention to a debate about what it means to be an artist, and how musicians can both make a living and earn prestige and honor, I argue that rather than one system of value and exchange dominating social and economic interactions in this music industry today, instead, multiple regimes of value shape artists’ choices. I give examples …


Listening To Garhwali Popular Music In And Out Of Place, Stefan Fiol Jun 2018

Listening To Garhwali Popular Music In And Out Of Place, Stefan Fiol

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

Listening to popular music is a central means by which people construct their place in the world, both literally and figuratively. For Garhwalis living inside and outside of the Himalayas, listening to vernacular popular music has been one way in which they imagine themselves to be part of a specific place and a larger cultural region. Displacement is a major theme of these songs, and practices of listening underline the mobile and trans-local aspects of life for many Garhwalis. In order to assess the impact of popular music consumption on notions of place, and vice versa, this article provides ethnographic …


The State Of The Guitar In Kathmandu, Mason Brown, Samyog Regmi Jun 2018

The State Of The Guitar In Kathmandu, Mason Brown, Samyog Regmi

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

The thriving guitar scene in Kathmandu is not well known outside of the country, and particularly not in the West. It has also not been the topic of much recent scholarship. It has been assumed that for Nepalis the guitar, as a foreign instrument, represents freedom and modernity; but, is this true, and what else might it signify to Nepali guitarists themselves? This article gives an overview of the history of the guitar in Kathmandu by drawing on both published scholarship and interviews conducted by the authors with twelve prominent Nepalese guitarists and guitar educators to establish the current state …


Encoding Spatial Experience In Garhwali Popular Music Cassettes, Andrew B. Alter Jun 2018

Encoding Spatial Experience In Garhwali Popular Music Cassettes, Andrew B. Alter

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

Connections between particular sounds and geographically conceived places/spaces seems to be a recurrent part of many repertoires in different parts of the Himalaya. A number of examples exist in which ritual repertoires are linked to pilgrimage pathways, to specific spiritual sites or to an ordering of space in relation to geomorphic realities. In the North Indian region of Garhwal, these connections are most directly made within wedding processions in which particular repertoire items are mapped against particular landscapes and pathways. In other repertoire items, specific motivic devices are used in more subtle ways to enhance the spatial experience of performers …


Introduction: Popular Music Across The Himalayas, Noé Dinnerstein, Andrew Alter Jun 2018

Introduction: Popular Music Across The Himalayas, Noé Dinnerstein, Andrew Alter

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Gallery, Andrew Alter, Noé Dinnerstein Jun 2018

Gallery, Andrew Alter, Noé Dinnerstein

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Review Of The Song Collector By Erik Koto, Anna Morcom Dec 2017

Review Of The Song Collector By Erik Koto, Anna Morcom

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Review Of "Dāphā: Sacred Singing In A South Asian City: Music, Performance And Meaning In Bhaktapur, Nepal" By Richard Widdess, Subhash Ram Prajapati Dec 2016

Review Of "Dāphā: Sacred Singing In A South Asian City: Music, Performance And Meaning In Bhaktapur, Nepal" By Richard Widdess, Subhash Ram Prajapati

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


17th International Association For Ladakh Studies (Ials) Conference Report Jan 2016

17th International Association For Ladakh Studies (Ials) Conference Report

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Kathmandu Social Science Baha Conference Jan 2016

Kathmandu Social Science Baha Conference

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Macalester Grants Tenure Status To Seven Faculty Members, Macalester College Jan 2012

Macalester Grants Tenure Status To Seven Faculty Members, Macalester College

College Press Releases

No abstract provided.


Tibetan Modernities: Notes From The Field On Cultural And Social Change, Robert Barnett And Ronald Schwartz, Eds.; Reviewed By Geoff Childs, Geoff Childs Oct 2011

Tibetan Modernities: Notes From The Field On Cultural And Social Change, Robert Barnett And Ronald Schwartz, Eds.; Reviewed By Geoff Childs, Geoff Childs

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Wandering With Sadhus: Ascetics In The Hindu Himalayas By Sonda Hausner; Reviewed By Mary Cameron, Mary Cameron Oct 2011

Wandering With Sadhus: Ascetics In The Hindu Himalayas By Sonda Hausner; Reviewed By Mary Cameron, Mary Cameron

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


On Musical Cosmopolitanism, Martin Stokes Aug 2008

On Musical Cosmopolitanism, Martin Stokes

Macalester International

No abstract provided.


Response To Lam - 2, Chuen-Fung Wong Aug 2008

Response To Lam - 2, Chuen-Fung Wong

Macalester International

No abstract provided.


About The Authors Aug 2008

About The Authors

Macalester International

No abstract provided.


On Musical Cosmopolitanism, Martin Stokes Sep 2007

On Musical Cosmopolitanism, Martin Stokes

The Macalester International Roundtable 2007

No abstract provided.


Music Of The Tibetan Diaspora, Keila Diehl Jan 2004

Music Of The Tibetan Diaspora, Keila Diehl

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Conference Digest And Abstracts Jan 2000

Conference Digest And Abstracts

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.


Words About Music, David Henderson Jan 1997

Words About Music, David Henderson

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.