Ethnomusicology
Dr Michael Frishkopf
Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology
Director, Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble
Dr Michael Frishkopf is an ethnomusicologist specializing in musics of the Arab world and West Africa. His research interests also include social network theory and digital multimedia technology. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Music, Associate Director of the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology, and Associate Director for Multimedia at FolkwaysAlive!
From 1987 to 1989 he conducted research on music of the Ewe people in south-eastern Ghana, focusing on traditional song composition. In the 1990s, his research interests shifted to Islam and musics of the Arab world, especially Islamic hymnody and Sufi ritual in Egypt. There he lived for nearly six years, studying ritual performance at Sufi festivals and in a wide variety of Sufi orders. He publishes regularly on Arab music, music and Islam, music in Africa, and Sufism.
Frishkopf is currently working on three large projects. A long-term SSHRC-funded research study centered on the Arab music industry inquires about the production and consumption of recorded media in the Arab world, including the cultural economy of music production; the urban geography of cassette retailers in Cairo; the habits of Arab music consumers across social categories; and the Arab music video phenomenon.
In 2002, he conceived MuDoc (Music/Multimedia Documentation), a distributed, multimedia repository providing peer-reviewed web-based submissions, archival storage, and search – a sort of ethnomusicologist’s YouTube. A key feature enables submissions to be linked to one another, thus establishing a “world music web” of multimedia objects. This project has been supported by the University of Alberta office of VP Research, Sun Microsystems, Western Economic Diversification Canada, and Alberta Innovation and Science.
In 2005 a FolkwaysAlive team led by Frishkopf proposed the Virtual Museum of Canadian Traditional Music, featuring South Asian music in Edmonton, Alberta fiddling, Ukrainian music in Canada, and Canadian songs from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Funded by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (Heritage Canada), the museum is scheduled to come online by 2008.
He continues to work in West African music, conducting research centered on music composition and performance, and its relation to traditional society in a changing world; his most recent project is a scholarly CD documenting an Ewe poet-composer-singer’s oeuvre in a performance system called Kinka. Frishkopf has recently established the first Faculty of Arts study abroad program in Ghana. Entitled West African Music, Dance, Language, and Culture, this program includes study at the University of Ghana (Legon), and in the rural Volta Region, homeland of the Ewe people, combined with travel throughout the country.
Frishkopf is also active as a composer and performer. Originally trained as a pianist, he studied Third Stream, jazz, and world music with Ran Blake at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and composition at Yale. He performs on a variety of world music instruments, including Ghanaian percussion, and a Middle Eastern reed flute favored by Sufis, the nay. In 1999, he founded the West African Music Ensemble, which he directed for four years. In 2004 he founded the Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble, which he continues to lead.
Over the years, he has received numerous fellowships supporting his research, including grants from Fulbright, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Killam Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Dr Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, FRSC, is Professor of Music and Director of the FolkwaysAlive! project as well as founder and director of the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology.
A cellist and sarangi player, she is interested in the poetics and politics of music and has published widely on South Asian and Islamic performance practices, including Sufi Music in India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwaliand the co-edited Muslim Society in North America and Muslim Families in North America.
Her research in oral tradition and political economy includes the edited volumeMusic and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics, and Master Musicians of India: Hindustani Sarangi Players Speak. Her interest in women musicians extends from the co-edited Voices of Women: Essays in Honor of Violet Archer, to her current book project Female Agency and Patrilineal Constraints: Situating Courtesans in 20th Century India.
Federico Spinetti is an ethnomusicologist and Assistant Professor of Music. He received his Laurea in Oriental History from the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Bologna in 1999. He entered the graduate program at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2000, completing his Master's degree in Ethnomusicology in 2001 and his PhD in 2006. He teaches Ethnomusicology courses at all levels in the Department of Music (including seminar classes such as Field Methods, Music and Religion, Music and Politics, Music and Documentary Filmmaking) and undergraduate lecture courses (including Popular Musics of the Non-Western World and Introduction to World Music). In Winter 2012, Spinetti will be teaching two courses at the Faculty of Arts School of Cortona (Introduction to Modern Italian Musical Life: from Opera to Hip-hop; and Music and Documentary Filmmaking).
Dr. Spinetti’s main research and theoretical interests include the politics and political economy of music, the intersections of traditional and popular music spheres, music and architecture, and ethnographic filmmaking. His ethnographic research since 2002 has focused on the musical cultures of Persian-speaking countries. He has conducted extensive fieldwork particularly in Tajikistan and Iran. Spinetti’s publications have primarily addressed the politics and political economy of Soviet and post-Soviet popular and traditional musics in Central Asia, as well as musical and historical relations across the Mediterranean sea (most notably in his edited volume Giuseppe Donizetti Pasha: Musical and Historical Relations between Italy and Turkey, Bergamo: Fondazione Donizetti, 2010).
Spinetti’s research outputs and publications have also been oriented towards audiovisual production, resulting in a multimedia exhibition, field and studio recordings, and documentary films. Since 2006 Spinetti has been researching the music-architecture nexus in the context of Iranian traditional martial arts gymnasia (Zurkhâneh). In 2010 he completed a documentary feature film on this topic (Zurkhaneh - The House of Strength. Music and Amrtial Arts of Iran), which was funded by the University of Alberta and co-produced by the Italian company Lab 80 Film.
Robert Kpogo
Ethnomusicology
Director, West African Music Ensemble
Robert Kpogo is a master Togolese musician and active member of Wajjo African Drummers and Kekeli African Dancers. He was born in Ghana and grew up in Togo, West Africa. Robert has performed in cultural festivals and traditional ceremonies since the age of 17.
In 1986 he went to St. Boniface, Manitoba, Canada, where he obtained his BA and studied education for two years. In 1992 Robert moved to Edmonton, where he pursued a Master's degree at the Newman Theological College.
Robert currently works at W.P. Wagner High School in the Special Needs Students program. He recently toured with Wajjo throughout Western Canada and the US. Robert currently directs the West African Music Ensemble.
Dr Kamaljeet Kaur
PhD (Chandigarh, India)
Voice Instructor, Indian Music Ensemble
Dr Kamaljeet Kaur began learning vocal Indian classical music at the age of four years. Her father, the late Sr. Narinder Singh, a disciple of Ustad Bahadur Singh of Punjab gharana of Tabla, devoted his entire life to music. Understanding the depth of classical music and Kamaljeet’s interest and ability, he encouraged her to learn more.
Kamaljeet did her Doctorate in Vocal Classical Music under the guidance of Dr. Pankaj Mala Sharma, an ex-Chairperson at Punjab University, Chandigarh, India. The topic for her dissertation was “Shastriya Sangeet mein Abhyas ka Swaroop avom Mahatva” (“Practice Technique and its Importance in Indian Classical Music”). Prior to completing her PhD, she did her Master's and Bachelor's with Honours degrees in Vocal Music from Punjab University, Chandigarh, India. She has also done her Sangeet Praveen and Sangeet Prabhakar from Prayag Sangeet Samiti, Allahabad, India.
Her father was her first guru who guided her through the seven swaras of music. Along with her father, she has been a student of the late Pt. Madan Lal Bali, a renowned vocalist of Patiala gharana, Mrs.Ratnika Tiwari and Mrs. Pamela Singh, both lecturers in a college at Chandigarh, India, Dr. Bhupinder Seetal, a disciple of Pt. Dilip Chander Bedi, Pt. Yashpaul, an eminent vocalist and disciple of Ust.Younus Hussain Khan Sahib of Agra gharana, Dr. Neelam Paul and Dr. Arvind Dutt. Her education continues under the guidance of Pt. Baldev Narang, a well-known vocalist of Punjab, India and Ust. Barkat Sidhu. Since 1993 she has given vocal lessons to students of all levels. She composes music and sings Khayal, Tarana, Thumari, Shabad and Ghazals styles of singing.
Her mission is to spread music (from east to west) and to share her passion with others.
Born in Jaipur, Sharmila Mathur received her Master of Music degree and was honoured with a Gold Medal by the University of Rajasthan for her outstanding achievements in sitar. Being the foremost disciple of Grammy Award winner Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Sharmila has been able to learn unique techniques of Bhatt’s beautiful style.
She has been an Assistant Professor in the University of Rajasthan, teaching Music to graduate and post-graduate students. Along with her stage performances, Sharmila played for All India Radio and Television. While living in Africa and Dubai for fourteen years, Sharmila performed in a variety of ensembles.
After arriving in Edmonton, Sharmila started teaching Sitar in the Ethnomusicology department of the University of Alberta where she has worked as a Director of the Indian Music Ensemble since 2005. Sharmila loves to share her knowledge and passion for Hindustani classical music.
Among her recent performances are Raga Mala Concert, University of Alberta World Music Sampler, Concert of Afro Canadian Association, Concert for Ankur Association.
Biography to come.
Biography to come.