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Thursday, December 5, 2019, 2:30 pm
Bonnie Wade, Professor Emerita, Department of Music
Hosted at Belmont Village Albany
1100 San Pablo Ave., Albany, CA 94706
Registration
When, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Japanese leaders put into motion processes of modernization, Western music was adopted into the curriculum of a new educational system as a technology for producing shared cultural space for all Japanese people. As the infrastructures of modernity developed, a new role of composer apart from performer was created to meet the needs that emerged in education, industry and commerce. In this talk I will introduce myself as an ethnomusicologist and explain what led me to study music in Japan--specifically Western music in that culture, the subject of my latest book, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (University of Chicago, 2015). Dwelling on the second half of the twentieth century, I shall introduce a few composers and "moments" from an assortment of compositions.
Bonnie Wade is an ethnomusicologist who has specialized in musics of India and Japan. After completing the PhD at UCLA in 1971, she began her teaching career at Brown University but was lured to Berkeley in 1975-76 to be the first woman on the professorial faculty in the Department of Music. Serving as chair of the Department of Music at UC Berkeley, Professor Wade was the first in the Department to specialize in ethnomusicology, founding what became a flourishing graduate program in ethnomusicology. In addition to serving as chair, Professor Wade also served as Dean of Undergraduate Services, Dean of the College of Letters and Science, and for two years as Acting Chair of the Department of Art History. She has served as President of the Society for Ethnomusicology and Vice-President of the American Musicological society. Professor Wade has published many articles, monographs, books and textbooks, including "Thinking Musically. Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture," now in its third edition, and "Music in Japan: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture."