This year, UNT students and faculty are making major contributions to the annual conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, to be held in Denver, CO.  Graduate students Lizeth Dominguez, Thanmayee Krishnamurthy, Yuxin Mei, and José R. Torres-Ramos will be presenting papers in a panel they have jointly prepared, entitled "Musical Constructions of Masculinity: Identity and Authenticity Within Diverse Global Traditions." The panel is being sponsored by SEM's Gender and Sexualities Task Force. Dr. Steven Friedson will be delivering the keynote speech for SEM's Eductation Section, titled "Being-Musical in a University Core Curriculum." Dr. Cathy Ragland will be a member of the President's Roundtable, discussing "Engaged Activism among Ethnomusicologists Responding to the Contemporary Dynamic of Migrants and Refugees." Dr. Vivek Virani has organized a panel sponsored by the South Asian Performing Arts section, entitled "Reconfiguring South Asian Devotional Music: Professionalism, Identity, Technology," in which he will be presenting his paper "'Instruments Resound in the Palace of Emptiness': Mysticism, Activism, and Entertainment in North Indian Nirgun Performance." We're not only bringing our research, but also our music! Vivek Virani will be performing on tabla for the Music and Dance of Asia and the Middle East Concert. Cathy Ragland and Miguel Espinel will be DJing the Latinx Dance Party, and Nate Ash-Morgan will DJ an Afro Pop set at the African Music and Dance Night.

Last month, the UNT Chinese Ensemble, founded and led by doctoral student Yuxin Mei, participated in a fundraiser concert. The even, entitled "Hope for the Storm," was organized by the Richardson Mayor's Office in cooperation with the Texas American China Cultural Foundation, the Jiaping Shi Dance School, and the Network of Community Ministries. Other performers included students from the Jiaping Dance School, the Texas Boys Choir, and many community groups.  In total, the event raised over $12,000 towards relief efforts for those affected by Hurricane Harvey. The Mayor of Richardson sent a personal letter of gratitude to the UNT Chinese Ensemble for their contributions. The UNT Chinese Ensemble was founded by Yuxin Mei in 2016. Members include College of Music students Miguel Espinel, Joseph Gelle, Li Liu, Chen Mengyang, Samuel Miyashita, Alex Strader, Michael Thompson, and Jackie Yin, Xiao Yun, and several students from outside the college. We are very proud of the ensemble's engagement with the wider community, and of their compassionate efforts to help those in need.

We are very proud that José R. Torres-Ramos, our first ever ethnomusicology doctoral student at UNT, has been selected for a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship! José's hard work and commitment have set an excellent standard for all future students in the program. José will conduct 12-months of dissertation fieldwork in Mexico City and Guadalajara investigating how mariachi performers and audiences construct a lifeworld of musical machismo that indexes a notion of authentic Mexican cultural identity. In 2016, José was awarded the Presser Graduate Music Award at UNT. His Presser funded project consisted of a three-month performance-research practicum in Mexico including the development of an ethnomusicological praxis for mariachi teaching and performance.

The following ethnomusicology students presented papers at the regional Society for Ethnomusicology-Southern Plains conference on March 4 at UT-RGV in Edinburg, TX: Graduate Students: Thanmayee Krishnamurthy- “The Vidhushi (Female Musician): Transcending Gender Norms in South Indian Karnatic Music.”Yuxin Mei – “Reinterpreting Pipa Voice: How Contemporary Chinese Female Pipa Performers Reconstruct Power by Negotiating with a Gendered Voice.” Lizeth Dominguez - “No Temo La Muerte: Death as a Construction of Authentic Masculinity in the Narcocorrido.” José Torres – “La Plaza Garibaldi: An Embodied Space of Musical Machismo.” Undergraduates: Michael Cardenas – “Cumbia Tejana: Synthesis towards Unification in the Tejano Continuum” (also presented at the National Association for Chicana/o Studies Tejas Foco conference at Texas A&M, February 24). Vianey C. Rivera – “Me la quemo: Aesthetic Values within the Working Mariachi.”

In March 2017, Vivek Virani participated in the 3rd Workshop on Cross-Disciplinary and Multicultural Perspective on Musical Rhythm, hosted by NYU Institute Abu Dhabi.  He was one of 25 scholars invited to present at the conference, and also performed a solo tabla presentation at the "Musical Diversity" concert organized as part of the conference. In April, he has invited the renowned Indian folk singer, Prahlad Singh Tipanya, to UNT to present in a few of our ethnomusicology classes and has organized a concert for him and his troupe in the Recital Hall on April 11. Afterward,Vivek will accompany the troupe to Stanford, where he has been invited to present his research at the symposium on Singing Religious Poetry in North India.  Vivek has received an invitation from the Government of Sindh, Pakistan, to present at the 3rd International Conference on Sufi Heritage in Karachi in early May.

Cathy Ragland appears in the documentary film, “As I Walk Through the Valley,”  which premiered at South-by-Southwest on March 14 – 17. The film, directed by Ronnie Garza and Charlie Vela, tells the history of popular music in Texas-Mexican border towns of the Rio Grande Valley from the 1960s-Present.

Sean Peters, graduate student in ethnomusicology, will present his paper, "Speaking Through Noise: Punks in the Studio and the Importance of the Experiential," at the Society for Ethnomusicology, Southwest Chapter meeting on April 7 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.  He also received a scholarship package to study for the PhD in musicology at Cornell University starting in Fall 2017.

Lizeth Dominguez, graduate student in ethnomusicology, presented her paper entitled “Parrandera, Rebelde, y Atrevida: Jenni Rivera’s Creation of a Discursive Space in the Banda Genre.” It was presented as part of a panel titled Women on the Edge: Angry, Ironic and Fluid Voices Navigating Race, Culture, and Politics at the Society for Ethnomusicology conference at UT-Austin on December 5, 2015.