Professor Catherine Falk
BA(Hons), PhD Monash
Professor, School of Music, Head of Parkville Campus, Head of Ethnomusicology
Catherine Falk studied ethnomusicology at Monash University and her doctoral dissertation concerned the village music of West Java (1981). She introduced ethnomusicology subjects to the (former) Melbourne State College in 1976. She was head of Department of Music Education, Melbourne College of Advanced Education, 1986-93, and established performance of non-western music programs, particularly gamelan, at the Melbourne campus (1979). Her recent research concerns the music of migrants, especially the music of the Hmong people, as well as in the journals Asian Music, British Journal of Ethnomusicology and Asian Folklore Studies.
Professor Falk has been involved in fostering relationships with the wider community, particularly in the area of multiculturalism, since 1976 through courses for the Council of Adult Education, consultancy work with the Festival of All Nations and Radio National programs and as a founding member of the Boite, of Multicultural Arts Victoria and of the Nataraj Cultural Centre (now called The Spirit of India). She is an honorary life patron of the Chao Feng Chinese Orchestra (Melbourne) and the Melbourne Community Gamelan Inc, which she founded in 1991 and which now performs all over Australia and in Indonesia. She is on the editorial board of the international journals Hmong Studies Journal and The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology.
Current Activities
The confluence of Professor Falk's work with the Hmong and the emergence of cyberspace as a vehicle for communication and for preserving and disseminating knowledge has led her, firstly, into a new research project concerning the effects of cyberspace on the processes and products of traditional musical ethnography, and secondly, to develop a new approach in her later-year undergraduate and postgraduate leadership which concentrates on applied and advocacy ethnomusicology.
Applied Ethnomusicology is described by the International Council for Traditional Music as: guided by the principle of social responsibility, which extends the usual academic goal of broadening and deepening knowledge and understanding toward solving concrete problems and working both inside and beyond typical academic contexts. It concerns the practical application of ethnomusicological knowledge, theory and method in both public and private sectors, including legal, touristic, community development, international development, publishing, documentary filmmaking, pedagogical activism and healing contexts.
Professor Falk was part of a consortium of linguists and anthropologists from the University of Sydney, the ANU and the University of Melbourne which established the PARADISEC project, a collaborative research resource of digitalised ethnographic collections of endangered oral traditions in Asia and the Pacific. PARADISEC currently contains almost 2000 records in 254 languages from 39 countries, with more than 800 hours of salvaged and rare recordings. Her own and her research students’ field recordings are or will be permanently stored in PARADISEC.
Current Projects
In the second half of 2009 Catherine Falk will be a Research Fellow at the National Sound and Film Archive in Canberra. Her project is Australia's Engagement with the Performing Arts of Asian, Pacific and Indian Ocean Peoples: a Longitudinal Ethnographic Survey and Annotation of the collection of the National Film and Sound Archive.
The aim of this project is to identify, annotate and contextualise the NFSA’s audiovisual holdings which relate to the performing arts of Asia, the Pacific and the countries of the Indian Ocean.
Recent Research Projects
Prof Falk has been involved in a number of recent ARC-funded projects:
- 2006 - 2010 ARC Discovery Project “A study of acoustical, psycho-acoustical and musicological factors in tuned percussion ensemble design.” $548,000
- 2005 ARC LIEF “PARADISEC, the Pacific and regional archive for digital sources for endangered cultures: accessibility and decentralization.” $344,000
- 2004 ARC LIEF “Digital archiving equipment for PARADISEC research archive of Asia-Pacific region audio recordings.” $206,000
- 2003 ARC LIEF LEO “Quadriga system for research archive of Asia-Pacific region audio recordings.” $268,000.
- 2003 ARC Research Network Seed Funding Grant SR0354824 “Digital endangered cultural materials network: working group on digital research methodologies for endangered ethnographic material of the Asia-Pacific region.” $10,000
Other current research interests include:
Teaching
Professor Falk teaches the following undergraduate subjects:
- Music of the World
- The Ethnography of Music
- In the Groove
- Music and the Shaman
- Music in Rainforest Societies
- Music and Migration: The Australian Case
- The Music of Java and Bali
- Sounding Off: Music Subjugation Subversion
- Music Cultures of Asia
- Soundscapes: A University Breadth Subject under development
Post Graduate Supervision
Ongoing postgraduate research includes:
- The music of Dikir barat in Singapore and Malaysia
- A musical ethnography of the Kam people, southern China
- Underground rock music in Iran
- Musical preferences among the Lebanese community in Melbourne
Completed graduate research projects (Masters and PhD) include:
- Faramaz Payvar and his place in contemporary music in Iran
- The influence of the Jali tradition on post colonial and contemporary West African popular music
- The music of the Subanen in Mindanao
- The development of the guitar and guitar music in nineteenth century Buenos Aires
Publications
Recent publications include:
- 2004 "The private and public lives of the Hmong qeej or Miao lusheng." In Nicholas Tapp and Gary Yia Lee, eds.The Hmong in Australia. Change and Diaspora. Canberra, ACT: Pandanus Press, 123-152.
- 2004 "Hmong Instructions to the Dead: What the qeej says in the Qeej Tu Siav. "Part 1. Asian Folklore Studies 63 (1):1-29.
- 2004 "Hmong Instructions to the Dead: What the qeej says in the Qeej Tu Siav."Part 2. Asian Folklore Studies 63 (2): 167-220.
- 2003/2004 "The dragon taught us: Hmong stories about the origin of the free reed pipes qeej." Journal of Asian Music, 35 (1): 17-56.
- 2003 "If you have good knowledge, close it well tight": concealed and framed meaning in the funeral music of the Hmong qeej" British Journal of Ethnomusicology 12 (ii): 1-33.