Professor Margaret Kartomi
AM FAHA Dr. Phil (Humboldt University)
Research and Ethnomusicology Coordinator
Email :
margaret.kartomi@monash.edu
Phone : (03) 9905 3238
Fax : (03) 9905 3241
Location : Room 111, Performing Arts Centre, Building 68, Clayton Campus
Biography
Margaret Kartomi is a specialist on the ethnomusicology of Indonesia and Southeast Asia and the world authority on the music of Sumatra.
A graduate of the University of Adelaide, Margaret undertook doctoral studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin before taking up a research fellowship at Monash in 1969, a lectureship in 1970, and was promoted to reader in 1976 and professor in 1989. From the early 1970s she pioneered the teaching and research of Asian music in Australia. During her time as Head of School (between 1989 and 2001), she developed a new philosophy of education, directed the expansion of the University’s music programme to include performance and composition as well as ethnomusicology and musicology, and instituted several degrees and double degrees.
Margaret is the author of over 100 articles, four books and editor of six books and has produced six commercially released CDs. Her publications cover many areas including the music of Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Maluku, Flores, Chinese-Indonesia, Jewish - Asia and Australia - and Australian Indigenous children’s music; also youth orchestras, music education and public policy.
Professor Kartomi’s next book, Musical Journeys in Sumatra, will be published by the University of Illinois Press in late 2011. She also serves on the editorial board of Acta Musicologica, Ethnomusicology Forum and Journal of Musicological Research.
Margaret has received many honours. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1982; was made an Order of Australia in 1991 and was awarded an Australian Government Centenary Medal in 1993. In 2005 Margaret was elected a Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society.
Margaret is in demand as a supervisor of higher degrees and has successfully directed more than two dozen theses.
Taking Notes with Professor Margaret Kartomi [Monash Magazine - October 2009]
Research Interests
Musicological and ethnomusicological theory; organology; historiography; ethnomusicology of Indonesia and Southeast Asia; Aboriginal Australian children’s music; Baghdadi-Jewish music; youth orchestras; music education; public policy; music performance; music across the arts; music aesthetics
Prizes, Grants, Honours
Recipient of many Australia Research Council Grants since 1973
Order of Australia (AM)
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Centenary Medallist, Commonwealth of Australia
Corresponding Member, American Musicological Society
German Critics’ Prize for best ethnographic record of the year, 1988 and 2007
Recent Publications
Journal Articles
2011 ‘“Art with a Muslim theme” and “Art with a Muslim flavor”’ among women of west Aceh,” in David Harnish and Anne Rasmussen (eds), Divine Inspirations: Music and Islam in Indonesia, New York: Oxford University Press, 269-96.
2011 ‘Traditional and modern forms of pencak silat in Indonesia: the Suku Mamak in Riau’, Musicology Australia 33/1 (2011), 47-68.
2010 ‘The development of the Acehnese sitting song-dances and frame-drum genres as part of religious conversion and continuing piety’, Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde 166/1: 83–106.
2010 ‘Toward a methodology of war and peace studies in ethnomusicology: the case of Aceh, 1976-2009’, Ethnomusicology 54/3: 452–83.
2010 ‘The musical arts in Aceh after the tsunami and conflict’, in Klisala Harrison, Elizabeth Mackinlay and Svanibor Pettan (eds), Applied Ethnomusicology: Historical and Contemporary Approaches, Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press: 200–13.
2010 “Problems of the Intercultural Reception and Methods of Describing and Analyzing Musical Rhythm”, in Cao Benye, Ritual Soundscape: Dialogues between Musicology, Religious Studies and Anthropology, Translated into Chinese in this publication by Wen Jun: 391-400 (Article first appeared Tradition and its Future in Music: Report of SIMS, 1990, Osaka, Tokyo: Mita Press 1991, pp. 529-539)
2009 “Surviving Conflict: Aceh’s performing artists have blossomed despite the conflict and tsunami’”, Inside Indonesia, Issue 96 (April-June)
2008 'A response to two problems in music education: the Young Australian Concert Artists Program of the Australian Youth Orchestra’, Music Education Research 10/1, 141–58
2007 ‘Youth orchestras in the global scene’, in Growing up Making Music: Youth Orchestras from Australia and the World [Australasian Music Research 9, special issue] ed. Margaret Kartomi with Kay Dreyfus and David Pear, 1-26
2007 ‘The Australian Youth Orchestra Inc: its identity as a national icon and expansion of its performance and educational programs’, [Australasian Music Research 9, special issue] ed. Margaret Kartomi with Kay Dreyfus and David Pear, 27–53.
Special Issue Journals
2007 Growing up Making Music: Youth Orchestras from Australia and the World [Australasian Music Research 9] special issue, ed. Margaret Kartomi and Kay Dreyfus, with David Pear
2004 Silk, Spice and Shirah: Musical Outcomes of Jewish Migration into Asia, c. 1780-c.1950, Special Issue of Ethnomusicology Forum 13/1 [guest editors Margaret Kartomi and Kay Dreyfus]
Recording
Out of Babylon: The Music of Baghdadi-Jewish Migrations into Asia and Beyond, Celestial Harmonies CD 13274-2, with 60-page booklet of musicological commentary and analysis (with Bronia Kornhauser), 2007
