Henry Spiller
 hjspiller@ucdavis.edu Old Firehouse Office Hours N/A |
Henry Spiller is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on
Sundanese music and dance from West Java, Indonesia; he is particularly
interested in investigating how individuals deploy music and dance in
their personal lives to articulate ethnic, gender, and national
identities. He has studied Sundanese music and dance for over twenty
years, and conducted fieldwork in Bandung, West Java, on several
occasions, including ten months of Fulbright-sponsored dissertation
research in 1998-99. Spiller's publications appear in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and in journals such as Asian Music, Worlds of Music, Asian Theatre Journal, and Balungan. He has presented papers at regional and national meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), the Association for Theatre Arts (ATA), and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). ABC-CLIO published his first book, Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia, in 2004. He currently is working on a book, based on his dissertation, focusing on constructions of masculinity in Sundanese men's improvisational dance in West Java, Indonesia. His current research focuses on why some North Americans were attracted to Javanese music in the early part of the 20th century. Spiller holds a bachelor's degree in music from UC Santa Cruz, a master's degree in harp performance from Holy Names College, and a master's degree and the Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley. He taught gamelan at Mills College in Oakland, California, and music at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. From 2002-05 he served as Luce Assistant Professor in Asian Music and Culture at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. At UC Davis, Spiller teaches world music classes and graduate seminars, and directs the Department of Music's gamelan ensemble |