POSTGRADUATE PROSPECTUS

DEPARTMENT OFMUSICThe Department of Music is the largest centreof ethnomusicology in Europe, offering uniqueeducational and research opportunities. The specialcharacter of the Department has attracted excellentratings for teaching and research, for example inTeaching Quality and Research Assessments, and innewspaper university guides.NUMBER OF STAFF 8RAE 5DEPARTMENT WEBSITEwww.soas.ac.uk/musicFACULTY Arts and HumanitiesTAUGHT MASTERS DEGREESMMUS ETHNOMUSICOLOGYMMUS PERFORMANCE115The Department owns a number of musicalinstruments and ensembles (including Javanesegamelan and Thai classical ensemble), and runsperformance courses. The School’s main libraryhas a large collection of ethnomusicologicalpublications and sound and video recordings.In addition, postgraduate students of theDepartment have access to a research archive,and to specialised audiovisual and multimediafacilities, including a recording studio.The Department has links with the Departmentof Music at King’s College, University ofLondon, and with a number of universities inother countries. Outside of its formal teachingprogrammes, the Department runs a series ofconcerts and workshops, including studentrecitals, and a highly successful World MusicSummer School involving 17 courses in 2007some taught by amazing performers fromamong our own present or past students(www.soas.ac.uk/summermusicschool).RESEARCHStaff and students pursue research on a widerange of subjects, mainly but not exclusivelyfocused on the music of Asia and Africa (projectson Caribbean and Eastern European music, forexample, are also in progress). Staff have specialinterests in the music of China and Central Asia(Harris), Korea (Howard), Japan, Indonesia andThailand (Hughes), India and Nepal (Widdess),the Islamic Middle East (Wright), the Jewishworld (Wood), and Africa (Durán). Music isstudied as a cultural phenomenon, and alsofrom analytical and historical perspectives.Instrumental and vocal, sacred and secular, artand popular, traditional and modern musicalforms are all of equal interest. Research methodsemployed include fieldwork, archive research,recording, performance, transcription andanalysis, and composition.For several years SOAS hosted the AHRCResearch Centre for Cross-Cultural Music andDance Performance. This provided a majorstimulus to performance research among staffand students. The Department will continue topromote such performance-based research and topublish results as CDs, DVDs and in written form.Postgraduate students of the Department comefrom a wide variety of backgrounds in the UK andfrom overseas. Most are performers of music aswell as researchers, and there is a lively interchangeof musical skills and interests. After graduating,they go on to an equal diversity of careers in musicand other fields: alumni include a curator at theBritish Library Sound Archive, several employeesof the Asian Music Circuit, a producer with theBBC World Service, lecturers in ethnomusicologyat universities in Korea, Lesotho, Thailand, Ireland,the USA and the UK among others, performers,music teachers and composers.SOME RECENT RESEARCH THESESMelissa Elliott – Music, Race and Diaspora: RomaniMusic Making in Ostrava, Czech RepublicIain Foreman – The Culture and Poetics of JazzImprovisationRaiomond Mirza – The House of Song: MusicalStructures in Zoroastrian Prayer PerformanceJames Burns – The Beard Cannot Tell Stories to theEyelash: A Study of Creative Transformation in an EweFuneral Dance-Drumming TraditionMUSIC