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Judith O. Becker

Biography:
Glenn McGeogh Collegiate Professor of Musicology and of Ethnomusicology, School of Music, app’t 1972
Education: B.Mus. University of Michigan, 1954
M.A. University of Michigan, 1968
Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1972

Research/Teaching Specializations: Southeast Asian and Asian music, Indonesian Gamelan, music and trance, music and ritual, music and Islam.

Current Research
Professor Becker has conducted fieldwork in Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. Currently, her interest is in the relationship between music and religious ecstasy across cultures. She is exploring the common ground between the humanistic, cultural, anthropological approaches, and the scientific, cognitive, psychological approaches as she sees the bringing together of the two as among the great challenges of the field of ethnomusicology.

Courses Taught: Beginning Javanese Gamelan, Javanese Gamelan Ensemble, Music in Culture, Music of Asia, Introduction to Ethnomusicology, Music and Ritual, Colloquium in Ethnomusicology, Music and Islam, Introduction to Graduate Studies, Aesthetics of Music, Music of Southeast Asia

Field Research: Burma: 3 years; Indonesia: 2 years; India: 3 months; Sri Lanka: 3 months

Publications:

BOOKS

Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture, eds. A. Kleinman, S. Cloakley, E. Scarry and K. Shelmay, Harvard University Press, currently in press;
Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing. University of Indiana Press. 2004
Gamelan Stories: Tantrism, Islam and Aesthetics in Central Java. Tempe: Arizona State University Press, 1993. Revised and Reprinted 2004.
Karawitan: Source Readings in Javanese Gamelan and Vocal Music, vols. 1-3, J. Becker and A. Feinstein, eds., Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1984, 1987, 1988.
Traditional Music in Modern Java, Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1980.
Arts, Ritual and Society in Indonesia, eds. E.M. Bruner, J. O. Becker, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, Papers in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, No. 53, 1979.

ARTICLES

"Anthropological Perspectives on Music and Emotion," in Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, eds. Patrik Juslin and John Sloboda. Oxford University Press. 2001
"Listening Selves and Spirit Possessioni," World of Music 42 (2) (2000) special issue on shamanism/spirit possession, ed. Ron Emoff
"Tantrism, Rasa, and Javanese Gamelan Music music" in Enchanting Powers: Music in the World's Religions, ed. Lawrence E. Sullivan, pages 15-59. "Religions of the World." Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, 1997.
"Music and Trance" Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology 4 (1994) MIT Presrs.
"Aesthetics' and the 'Artist' Universalism and the Court Arts of Central Java, 14th-20th centuries A.D." In Europe and the Orient. Canberra: The Humanities Research Center, Australian National University, 1994.
"Southeast Asia" (Chap. XIII) in Ethnomusicology: Historical and Regional Studies, ed. H. Meyers. The Norton/Grove Handbooks in Music. New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.
"Indonesian Music" in The New Grove Handbook of World Music. London: Macmillan Press, 1993.
"A brief essay on Claptrap, Turtles and Ethnomusicology," Ethnomusicology, vol. 35, no. 3, Fall, 1991.
"The Javanese court Bedhaya Dance as a Tantric Metaphor" in Metaphor: A Musical Dimension, ed. by J. Kassler. Sydney: Currency Press, 1991.
"Kalau Bahasa Dapat Diterjamahkan, Mengapa Musik Tidak?" (If Language Can be Translated, Why Is It That Music Cannot?). Seni Pertunjukan Indonesia (Indonesian Performing Arts) Tahun I, no. 1, Jakarta. pp. 14-25, 1990.
"Earth, Fire, shakti and the Javanese gamelan," Ethnomusicology, vol. 32, no. 3 (Fall 1998).
"Is Western Art Music Superior?" in Musical Quarterly 62 (1986).
Review Essay: Esthetics of Music by Carl Dalhaus in The Journal of Musicological Research 5 (1985)
Entries on Burmese music in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan, 1984
"One Perspective on Gamelan in America," Asian Music 15 (1983).
"Aesthetics in Late 20th Century Scholarship," The World of Music, Journal of the International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation (Berlin) in Association with the International Music Council (UNESCO) 25 (1983).
"Some Thoughts about Pathet," International Musicological Society, Report of the Twelfth Congress-Berkeley 1977, Basel, London: Barenreiter, 1981.
"Indonesian Music," Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary, New York: The Dun and Bradstreet Corporation, 1981.
"Hindu-Buddhist Time in Javanese Gamelan Music," The Study of Time IV, ed. J.F. Fraser, New York, Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1981.
"A Southeast Asian Music Process: Thai thaw and Javanese irama," Ethnomusicology 24 (1980).
"Sudostasien" (Music of Southeast Asia), Aussereuropaische Musik in Einzeldarstellungen, MGG, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, supplement Kassel, Basel, Tours, London: Barenreiter, 1980.
"Time and Tune in Java," The Imagination of Reality: Essays in Southeast Asian Coherence Systems, ed. by A.L. Becker and A. Yengoyan, Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company, 1979.
"People Who Sing; People Who Dance," What is Indonesian Culture?, ed. Gloria Davis. Athens, Ohio: Southeast Asia Series, No. 52, 1979.
"Kroncong, Indonesian Popular Music," Asian Music 7 (1975).
"Western Influence in Gamelan Music," Asian Music 3 (1972).
"The Anatomy of a Mode," Ethnomusicology 12 (1969).
"Percussive Patterns in Southeast Asia," Ethnomusicology 12 (1968).
"The Migration of the Arched Harp from India to Burma," The Galpin Society Journal 20 (1967).
"Music of the Pwo Karen of Northern Thailand," Ethnomusicology 7 (1964).
(With A.L. Becker) "Response to Feld and Roseman," Ethnomusicology 28 (1984): 454-6
(With A.L. Becker) "A Musical Icon: Power and Meaning in Javanese Gamelan Music," The Sign in Music and Literature, ed. Wendy Steiner, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981.
(With A.L. Becker) "The Grammar of a Musical Genre, Srepegan," Journal of Music Theory 23 (1979).

Faculty Profile
Judith Becker received her degrees in Music and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She is an authority on the music of Southeast Asia. She is a co-founder of the Center for World Performance Studies at the University of Michigan and was its first director. For most of her years at the University of Michigan, she has been director of the University gamelan ensemble, which she helped establish in 1967. She has written numerous articles for publications such as The Galpin Society Journal, Ethnomusicology, Journal of Music Theory, Journal of Musicological Research, The World of Music, Asian Music, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The New Grove Handbook of Ethnomusicology, The New Grove Handbook of World Music, Leonardo Music Journal and The Musical Quarterly.

Becker is the author of three books, Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing (2004), awarded the Merriam prize as the best book published in Ethnomusicology for that year, Traditional Music in Modern Java (1980) and Gamelan Stories: Tantrism, Islam and Aesthetics in Central Java (1993). She is the editor of Art, Ritual and Society in Indonesia (1979) and the three-volume set of translations entitled Karawitan: Source Readings in Javanese Gamelan and Vocal Music (1984/1987/1988). These three volumes are the first substantial set of translations ever made of musical works written by Southeast Asian scholars and musicians.

Professor Becker has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships. In 1967 she was awarded the Charles Seeger prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology. Since then her research has been honored and supported by the Society for Ethnomusicology, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institute, the Social Science Research Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation, as well as grants from the School of Music Faculty Research Fund, the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Michigan. She was the first recipient of Michigan's John D'Arms Award for graduate student mentoring, and was recently awarded the Glenn McGeoch Collegiate Professorship of Music (2000).

The center is committed to promoting a broader and deeper understanding of Southeast Asia and its peoples, cultures, and historiesby providing resources for faculty, students and the community to learn and disseminate knowledge about the region.