Graduate Degree: University of Illinois at Springfield - Doctor of Philosophy, Anthropology

State Certified Teacher

As a high school student, I began a serious hobby of collecting vinyl recordings of music from around the world. I special ordered many titles from my local record shop, and my collection grew to include all regions of the world. I listened to those vinyl recordings with joyful abandon well into my mature university years and beyond. I was confident that I could locate any music after listening to it for a brief moment. I am proud that I have that knowledge. It is a joy to know the bountiful beauty of music from around the world. For instance, I was taking an Uber ride in Queens, New York, this past weekend. I asked the driver where he was from. Egypt, he said. I excitedly mentioned that I loved the oud music of Hamza el Din, who was Egyptian. The driver was not familiar with him, and that bewildered me. I also asked receptionist at the hotel I was staying with that weekend, where he was from and whether he could sing a folk song from his country for me. He was from India. We spoke briefly about Indian violin music (his Aunt was a violinist in that tradition), but we ran out of time for him to sing to me. I was also very active in sports. My next door neighbors had a beautiful, large, rectangular trampoline in their backyard. I grew up on that trampoline, bouncing and flying like a bird every summer. I loved and participated in gymnastics. Moving my body with meaning and grace was so therapeutic and joyful for me at this young age. Tennis was another joy of mine. I was fortunate to obtain private lessons to become a serious tennis player. Tennis for me was all about synching the movements of my arms, legs, and torso with the perpetual motion of the tennis ball. The goal for me was to synchronize all moving parts into what I called the ballet of tennis. There is nothing quite like hammering a beautiful forehand across the net! I took my violin playing seriously as well. I started private lessons in the fourth grade. But it was not until I heard and fell in love with Andean folk music that something click in me as a violinist. I finally found my "home," my own "soul music." As a cultural anthropologist, I focused on researching and analyzing Peruvian violin music from an anthropological perspective. More specifically, and without being fully aware of this, I focused on questions of identity of violin players in Peru, just as I had wrestled with my own identity as a child of mixed heritage. My father was a first-generation child of Jewish immigrant parents born in the urban US (during the Golden Years of the Bronx in the 1930s). My mother hailed from a very small, rural, farming, Primitive Baptist community in Southern Virginia. Her family history reached all the way back to Jamestown in 1610! How did my parents meet? In Turkey, of course! Thanks to NATO and the construction of naval bases to deter weapons from the USSR. My experience of being culturally "mixed" drove me to engage in the fascinating research on genealogy, family systems through time, and self-identity. I brought this curiosity with me to the Andes to inform the kinds of questions I asked of the violinists who collaborated with and taught me not just their music, but their "Why?"