Michael Frishkopf

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After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. (Aldous Huxley)

Ethnomusicology is "the meaningful social practice of studying music as a meaningful social practice" (Frishkopf 2012).



Dr. Michael Frishkopf
Associate Professor, Department of Music
Associate Director, Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology (CCE)
Research Fellow, folkwaysAlive!

Mail: Michael Frishkopf, Department of Music, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, 3-82 Fine Arts Building, Edmonton, AB CANADA T6G 2C9
Office: 334D Old Arts Building
Tel: Skype: (617) 275-2589; office: (780) 492-0225. Music Dept: (780) 492-3263
Fax: Music Dept: (780) 492-9246. CCE (780) 492-0242
Web: http://bit.ly/mfwiki

Office hours: Wednesdays, 1 pm - 3:15 pm. Schedule an appointment.

Introduction

Michael Frishkopf, Associate Professor of Music at the University of Alberta, is an ethnomusicologist and composer. A graduate of Yale College (BS Mathematics, 1984), Tufts University (MA Ethnomusicology, 1989), and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D. Music, 1999), Dr. Frishkopf’s ethnomusicological research interests include Sufi music; the Arab music industry; sound in Islamic ritual performance; music and religion; comparative music theory; the sociology of musical taste; social network analysis; (virtual [world) music], digital music repositories; music in West Africa; music of refugees (mainly Liberian refugees in the Buduburam refugee camp, Ghana); participatory action research; psychoacoustics and music cognition; music therapy as memory therapy...

His research combines various fields, including ethnomusicology, anthropology, Middle East studies, religious/Islamic studies, psychoacoustics, computer science, media studies, literary studies, music theory... He is a lifetime member of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

He has received numerous fellowships supporting his research, including grants from Fulbright, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Killam Foundation (Canada), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, supporting his extensive fieldwork in Egypt.

In performance, Michael specializes in the nay (Middle Eastern reed flute), and also performs the song-drum-dance traditions of Ghana. He is the founder (in 2004) of the University of Alberta Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble, as well as the University of Alberta West African Music Ensemble (in 1999). Both ensembles perform frequently in public in the Edmonton area, especially to support progressive causes. He also performs “Third Stream” and world music inflected jazz on the piano, following studies with Ran Blake and others in the Third Stream program at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

Some current projects include:

  • Sounds of Islam and Sufi ritual
  • Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam
  • Music media and the music industry in the Arab world
  • [Virtual (world] music) - world music and ethnomusicology in cyberworlds
  • Giving voice to hope: popular music towards sustainable development and peace (Liberia, Ghana...)
  • Sustaining traditional musical culture in collaboration with local organizations (Egyptian music, Arab music, West African music)
  • Digital repositories and metadata for ethnomusicology
  • The transmission of musical taste in Canada
  • Music culture as social network (social network analysis)
  • Developing a computer-based system for microtonal ear training.

CV

Curriculum Vitae


Publications

Theses

Collaborative outreach and action research

Multimedia projects

Documentary video

Documentary audio

  • Producer and writer for cassette/CD recording: Giving Voice to Hope: Music of Liberian Refugees. Audio CD with 28 page descriptive booklet (2009), documenting music produced by musicians living in the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana. Since 1990s this camp has sheltered refugees from conflict in nearby Liberia. Production is designed to raise public awareness about the camp, while returning profits to its participating NGOs and artists. (http://bit.ly/buducd)
  • Kinka: Traditional songs from Avenorpedo. Producer of cassette, audio CD and website (http://kinkadrum.org), and author of accompanying 40 page booklet (November 2010), based on MA thesis (1989).

Digital repositories

Technology

Educational programs

Musical composition and improvisation

Some recent work...

(Notes on the above compositions)

Nay improvisations...

  • Nay 1 (Edmonton Sound Sessions)
  • Nay 2 (Edmonton Sound Sessions)

Event production

(random sample)

In the media...

Sufism and the Moulid (Afropop worldwide)

Koranic Recitation (Afropop worldwide)

Influence of music in foreign conflicts (The Daily Orange, Syracuse University)

Thus Spake the Reed Flute (al-Ahram Weekly)

Liberia: Refugees Produce CD of Music With Canadian University (Allafrica)

Célébrer tout en musique (CBC)

Salsa de Arabia (World Changing)

University of Alberta composers