Himalayan Hybridity and the Evolution of Ladakhi Popular Music

Historically, Ladakh in the Western Himalayas was a significant nexus of Trans-Himalayan caravan trade, and thus exhibited a significant hybridity in its material, linguistic, religious, and musical culture. In this paper, I examine the rise of Ladakhi popular music in and through these crossroads, paying attention to themes of hybridity. I look at the development of Ladakhi ethnic, political, and musical identity, and the role of government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals with regard to the rise of new musical genres. Accompanying the historical survey of the music is as discussion of the evolutions of textual content. Changes in mass media technology and economics have had a profound effect on this remote region, and have shaped how cultural identity is negotiated by both song writers and consumers of popular music

Songs, Cultural Representation and Hybridity in Ladakh

Songs and cultural representation in Ladakh This article examines how Ladakhi songs represent cultural self-images through associated musical, textual, and visual tropes. Many songs of the past, both from the old royal house and the rural Buddhist populations, reflect the socio-political structure of Ladakhi society. Some songs, past and present, reflect a pan-Tibetan identity, both in connecting the former Namgyal dynasty to both the legendary King Gesar, as well as Nyatri Tsangpo, the historical founder of the Tibetan Yarlung Dynasty. Nevertheless, a distinct Ladakhi identity is consistently asserted. A number contain texts that evoke a mandala or symbolic representation of the world according to Vajrayana Buddhist iconography, ritual and meditative visualization practices. Situated as it was on the caravan routes between India, Tibet, China, and Central Asia, Ladakhi culture developed distinctive hybrid characteristics, including in its musical styles. The article discusses this tradition of hybridity from the 17th Century to the present day. Ladakhi music has moved into modern media space, variously portrayed through scholarly works, concerts, mass media, and the internet. he discussion continues with an examination of various contemporary representations of “tradition” and ethnic identity in both traditional and popular music. Looking at Ladakhi popular music, we see further hybridity based on media influences from Nepali popular music, Bollywood, and from Western popular styles, revealing how they interact with concepts of modernity in 21st Century Ladakh

2014 Kennesaw State Festival of New Music

Kennesaw State University School of Music presents the 2014 Kennesaw State Festival of New Music with featured guest composer, Chen Yi.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1374/thumbnail.jp

Teachers\u27 Institute for Equality in Education Held at the University of Arizona

Women from the Tucson community and the University of Arizona collaborated to design a two-week Teachers\u27 Institute for Equality in Education. Held last June on the university campus, the Institute was designed to help Arizona teachers of grades K through 12 develop nonsexist classroom methods and materials. The many inquiries we have received from other educators and women\u27s studies personnel throughout the country suggest that information about our program will help others design similar institutes in their own regions. We planned our Institute for the summer, since there is little time or money for bringing women\u27s studies information to elementary and secondary teachers during the academic year. Funding for the Institute came from a $51,026 grant under Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Desegregation of Public Education), a source suggested by Alison Hughes, director of the Tucson Women\u27s Commission and former grants writer for Tucson\u27s Pima Community College. The Title IV grant enabled us to pay Arizona teachers stipends, including per diem expenses to out-of-towners. The grant also provided honoraria to the university and community women who have participated endlessly, as volunteers, in so many of our programs. Myra Dinnerstein and Sherry O\u27Donnell of the university Women\u27s Studies Program administered the grant, provided speakers and consultants, and assembled women\u27s studies research guides. College of Education faculty members Betty Newlon and Brenda Even served as elementary and secondary school directors. They developed grade appropriate curriculum materials and classroom procedures, contacted Institute panelists, and served as liaisons between the university and Arizona public schools

The Behavior of Novae Light Curves Before Eruption

In 1975, E. R. Robinson conducted the hallmark study of the behavior of classical nova light curves before eruption, and this work has now become part of the standard knowledge of novae. He made three points; that 5 out of 11 novae showed pre-eruption rises in the years before eruption, that one nova (V446 Her) showed drastic changes in the variability across eruptions, and that all but one of the novae (excepting BT Mon) have the same quiescent magnitudes before and after the outburst. This work has not been tested since it came out. We have now tested these results by going back to the original archival photographic plates and measuring large numbers of pre-eruption magnitudes for many novae using comparison stars on a modern magnitude scale. We find in particular that four out of five claimed pre-eruption rises are due to simple mistakes in the old literature, that V446 Her has the same amplitude of variations across its 1960 eruption, and that BT Mon has essentially unchanged brightness across its 1939 eruption. Out of 22 nova eruptions, we find two confirmed cases of significant pre-eruption rises (for V533 Her and V1500 Cyg), while T CrB has a deep pre-eruption dip. These events are a challenge to theorists. We find no significant cases of changes in variability across 27 nova eruptions beyond what is expected due to the usual fluctuations seen in novae away from eruptions. For 30 classical novae plus 19 eruptions from 6 recurrent novae, we find that the average change in magnitude from before the eruption to long after the eruption is 0.0 mag. However, we do find five novae (V723 Cas, V1500 Cyg, V1974 Cyg, V4633 Sgr, and RW UMi) that have significantly large changes, in that the post-eruption quiescent brightness level is over ten times brighter than the pre-eruption level.Comment: 91 pages (preprint), AJ accepte

Negotiating sacred roles:a sociological exploration of priests who are mothers

In 1992, in a historic move, the Church of England voted to allow women's ordination to priesthood and in 1994 the first women priests started to be ordained. Despite much research interest, the experiences of priests who are mothers to dependent children have been minimally investigated. Based on in-depth interviews with seventeen mothers ordained in the Church, this paper will focus on how the sacred-profane boundary is managed. Priests who are mothers have a particular insight into the Church hierarchy as they symbolically straddle the competing discourses of sacred and profane. However, instead of reifying these binaries, the experiences of these women show how such dualisms are challenged and managed in everyday life. Indeed, in terms of experience, ritual, ministry and preaching, priests who are mothers are resisting, recasting and renegotiating sacred terrain in subtle and nuanced ways. Mothers thus not only negotiate the practical and sacramental demands placed on priests, but also illuminate how the sacred domain is regulated and constructed