Welcome to a video premiere in the Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture Series! This lecture, Listening to Divergent Histories through Canadian Music, features ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond, Professor Emerita, Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland. You’ll find the video embedded below!
Dr. Diamond is a Canadian ethnomusicologist who assumed the Canada Research Chair in Traditional Music at Memorial University in 2002. Before arriving in St. John’s she held full-time teaching positions at McGill, Queen’s, and York Universities, as well as visiting professorships at the University of Toronto and Harvard University. She has worked extensively with indigenous peoples in North America, Norway and Finland exploring the relationship of music to issues of cultural identity.
In this video, Listening to Divergent Histories through Canadian Music, Dr. Diamond reflects on how her approaches to documenting culture have shifted over fifty years, echoing not only changes in the academic realm but changes in her relations with Indigenous and other culturally diverse communities. She suggests that her approach may align with differences between Canadian and American institutions more generally, given such factors as two official languages and multiple forms of both settler and Indigenous governance in Canada. Her work also illustrates changes in the field of ethnomusicology, more generally, from extractionist research to dialogic conversations with Indigenous and other communities. Find the lecture in the player below!