Bonnie C. Wade Professor and Department Chair Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies

230 Morrison Hall
642-1460
email: bcwade@berkeley.edu

Office Hours

TEACHING AND RESEARCH. Ethnomusicology; Asian music with emphasis on India (particularly North India) and East Asia (particularly Japan); focuses on genres, historical perspectives, improvisatory work, contemporary Japanese music, ethnography.

PUBLICATIONS. Authored Works: Music in Japan; Thinking Musically: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture; Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art and Culture in Mughal India; Khyal: Creativity within North India's Classical Music Tradition; Music in India: The Classical Tradition; Tegotomono: Music for the Japanese Koto (See more details below on these books).

Edited works: Essays for a Humanist (co-editor); Report of the Twelfth Congress, Berkeley, 1977 International Musicological Society (co-editor with Daniel Heartz); Performing Arts in India; Essays on Music, Dance, and Drama (editor); Text, Tone and Tune: Parameters of Music in Multicultural Perspective (editor); several guest edited journal volumes.

Contributed works: Many essays in other edited works; numerous articles and reviews in various scholarly journals.

PERSONAL STATEMENT. As a result of graduating from a Bachelor of Music program (Boston University 1963), but subsequently observing the liberal arts experience as a teacher (Brown University 1971-75), I am a believer in education that integrates study of the arts with study of many other subjects. Not surprising for an ethnomusicologist (MA 1967 and PhD from UCLA)! The ethnomusicology program that I began here at UC Berkeley (from 1975-1976) sits comfortably in a department of music in a College of Letters and Science.

I enjoy pursuing multiple interests and seeing the big picture. I very much enjoy teaching, both undergraduates (majors and non-majors, for whom I have written three textbooks--Music in India: The Classical Traditions, Thinking Musically, and Music in Japan: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture) and graduate students. And I alternate periods when I pursue primarily professorial activities with periods when I add administrative work to the mix (Chair of the Department of Music 1983-88, Dean of Undergraduate Advising 1992-98, Chair of the Deans of the College of Letters and Science 1994-98, Chair of the Group in Asian Studies, since 1999, and now Chair of the Department of Music again).

My first research was in Japanese music (resulting in Tegotomono: 19th Century Koto Music, Greenwood-Praeger 1976) as a result of studying koto in Japan in 1963-64, but that was followed quickly by a focus on Hindustani music as a result of travel in South Asia in 1965. My book Khyal: Creativity Within North India's Classical Vocal Tradition (Cambridge University Press,1984) was a study of that improvisatory genre as performed in this century by multiple groups (gharanas) of musicians. For the next 14 or so years I focused on historical time (the 16th-17th centuries) and on visual sources (miniature paintings that depict music-making to trace the development of North Indian classical music); Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India was published in 1998 (University of Chicago Press). I have since renewed my work in Japan, now focusing on contemporary Japanese musical culture, in a sense returning to where I started. A result of some of my recent research has been Music in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2005), a textbook for the Global Music Series.

Ever-mindful of the important connection between teaching and research, I was able to meld them together in Thinking Musically, Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford University Press, 2004) for the Global Music Series (GMS). The GMS is an innovative introduction to world music that focuses on how people make music meaningful and useful in their lives. It consists of two framing volumes (one of which is Thinking Musically) and 17 case study volumes on music in various countries, all focused on themes and designed for in-depth study of a particular musical culture, and each accompanied by a CD. I am the co-General Editor of this Global Music Series for Oxford University Press.

DUSTJACKET INFORMATION ABOUT AUTHORED BOOKS NOTED ABOVE.

General.

• Thinking Musically (Oxford University Press, 2004) is designed for undergraduates and general readers with little or no background in music. It incorporates music from diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case study volumes.( VISIT www.oup.com/us/globalmusic for information on the volumes and instructional materials accompanying each). Thinking Musically discusses the importance of musical instruments, describing their significance in a culture's folklore, religion, and history. It explores fundamental elements of music--rhythm, pitch in melodic and harmonic relationships, and form--and examines how they vary in different musical traditions. The text considers the effects of cultural influences such as gender and ethnicity on the perception, interpretation, and performance of music. It also looks at how forces of nationalism, acculturation, and westernization can affect musical traditions. The book includes activities designed to build critical listening and individual study skills and is packaged with a 80-minute CD that features selections from a wide variety of musical cultures.

India.

• Music in India: The Classical Traditions (Prentice-Hall,1979; reprinted Riverdale/Simon and Schuster, 1987; second edition, Manohar, 1997). This book encompasses a vast panoply of instruments, forms, performers, principles, and history in the religious, folk, tribal, 'hybrid,' film, dance, theater, and classical traditions. It focuses primarily on two traditions of Indian classical music: North Indian (Hindustani) and South Indian (Karnatak/Carnatic). It is geared to the listener as well as performer. The chapters consider the listener and the effect of music, contrasting concepts in Indian and Western classical music, classification of melody (raga) type, ideas about notation and notating systems, primary melody-producing instruments, contrasts of Hindustani and Western concepts of rhythm and meter (tala), performance genres, and the analysis of what makes a good musician.
• Khyal. Creativity within North India's Classical Music Tradition (with cassette) (Cambridge University Press, 1984; reprinted Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997). It is a study of the genre of North Indian (Hindustani) classical music which has dominated in performances by highly trained vocalists for the last two centuries. Spanning this time, it is also a cultural history, a story of generous patronage by native princes, of the loss of this patronage when courts were dissolved, and of the resilience of musicians in adjusting to the vicissitudes of contemporary artistic life. In performing khyal the singer presents a brief composition, then improvises from 20-40 minutes according to certain guidelines. One chapter of the book discusses the compositions, the modal and metric materials, and the improvisational guidelines utilized by the khyal singers. Descriptions are illustrated with musical examples in transcription (in Western and in modified Indian notation) and on the accompanying cassette. Because khyal was developed by master musicians employed at courts scattered throughout North India, the manner of performing it varies among different groups of musicians (gharanas), so six major group traditions are considered, tracing the personal histories of singers, statements made in Indian sources about their musical styles, and considering those statements through analysis of recorded performances by leading musicians of recent decades, Also considered is individual artistic achievement, so important among musicians in the Hindustani tradition and in the development and performance of khyal. There is an extensive bibliography and discography, as well as illustrations of khyal in performance, genealogical charts, and maps.
• Imaging Sound. An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India (University of Chicago Press, 1998). The rich legacy of illustrated manuscripts and miniature paintings commissioned by the rulers of the Mughal Empire (1526-1858) and their images of musical instruments, portraits of musicians, and composition of ensembles form the basis of this study of how musicians of Hindustan encountered and Indianized music from the Persian cultural sphere. The book combines ethnomusicological and art historical methods with history and lore to present an interdisciplinary study of cultural life on the Indian subcontinent. Chapters focus on the political and cultural agendas of the great Mughals, beginning with Akbar, then follows the depictions of music-making through paintings of his successors to trace the gradual synthesis of Persian and Indian culture. Music of the period was not notated but transmitted orally thus the wealth of visual evidence helps to reconstruct the musical life of the Mughals and its relation to the Mughal political agenda. The images are an untapped major resource and suggest new interpretations of the history of the Mughal Empire, including original ideas about the role of patrons in the production of the arts and the role of women in Mughal court life--confirmed and complemented by written sources. This book contributes to many fields in its unique combination of sources: it is the study of musical change; of image-making in the past and the methodological use of images as "texts" in the present; of the role of patronage in the Mughal Empire; and the development of South Asian culture. The synthesis of music, literature, art, and culture deepens our knowledge of the manner in which the orally transmitted tradition of Hindustani music came to be what it is today. The book is beautifully illustrated with more than 180 reproductions of Mughal paintings and manuscripts. The images are the basis of a study that is fully immersed both in current intellectual debates and in three centuries of Mughal cultural life.
  

Japan.

• Tegotomono. Music for the Japanese Koto (Greenwood/Praeger, 1976). This book is a selective study of of honte-kaete tegotomono in 19th-century koto music. There is attention to cultural history, to text and text setting, song and song accompaniment, honte and kaete parts. The book has considerable musical analysis of the the materials and complete transcriptions of five compositions from published scores and one manuscript. A large number of brief examples are given throughout the text to demonstrate specific points. Tegotomono occupies a cherished place in the koto tradition and this study illuminates its music, poetry, and the musicians who have contributed to Japan's rich cultural history.
• Music in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2005) offers a vivid introduction to the music of contemporary Japan, a nation in which traditional, Western, and popular music thrive side by side. Drawing on the author's more than 40 years of experience the book focuses on three themes, one of which is how music in Japan has been profoundly affected by interface with both Western (Europe and the Americas) and Asian (continental and island) cultural spheres. A second theme is the process of gradual popularization, in which a local or a group's music eventually become accessible to a broader range of people; Japan's thriving popular music industry is a modern form of this historically important facet of Japanese musical culture.The third theme is the intertextuality of Japanese music: how familiar themes, musical sounds, and structures have been maintained and transformed across the various traditions of Japanese performing arts over time. The book has eyewitness accounts of performances, interviews with key performers, vivid illustrations, and is accompanied by a 80-minute CD of examples in the book. It also features guided listening and hands-on activities that encourage readers to engage actively and critically with the music.