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Visiting professor brings Indian music, culture to campus

By Catherine Monson '12
September 28, 2009

When you look at the areas of study Matthew Rahaim has explored — from Indian classical music to Gregorian chant and from hand gesture to medical anthropology — he appears to be an embodiment of the liberal arts tradition. And for the next few years he'll share his cross-disciplinary knowledge and expertise with students at St. Olaf through appointments in both the music and Asian studies departments made possible through a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

As a visiting professor of music and Asian studies, Rahaim will spend the next two years at St. Olaf teaching and pursuing his research. His appointment is funded by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program, a grant that is part of a new effort to support teaching appointments at liberal arts colleges and introduce them to the rewards of teaching, scholarship, and professional development.

The grant provided a perfect opportunity for Rahaim, a graduate of Wesleyan University and the University of California at Berkeley, to further his research studies as well as gain more teaching experience in a liberal arts atmosphere. “Once I decided I wanted to teach college, I knew I wanted to be in a place where teachers and students know each other and where people step across disciplinary boundaries very easily … a place like St. Olaf,” he says.

Musical diversity
Alison Feldt, associate professor of music and department chair, says there were many reasons the Music Department wanted to hire a specialist in ethnomusicology, but their main goal in creating this temporary position was to “improve and expand on” music in the non-Western European tradition. The part-time teaching position also conveniently overlaps with the Asian Studies Department, which has shared several teaching positions before.

Rahaim currently teaches courses in world music and Asian studies, both of which integrate some of his expertise in Hindustani, or North Indian vocal music. His world music course concentrates on the diversity of music in the world, while the Asian studies course introduces students to the Daodejing and the Ramayana, and explores Buddhism, comparative Asian medical systems, and the connections between colonialism and nationalism. In addition, Rahaim is designing a new course on Indian music performance to be offered this Interim.

Several research projects are also on his agenda for the next few years. One topic, which takes the material from his dissertation one step further and which he plans to turn into a book, is about the hand gestures of Indian vocalists. "The focus, he says, is on how "melody is manifest by the body in three-dimensional space at the same time it is manifest by the voice." He is expanding this project beyond North India to include various vocal traditions of the Middle East, and he will spend some of the spring semester doing research in India, Syria, and Lebanon.

Another area of Rahaim’s research looks at the harmonium, a small reed organ, and the various techniques among harmonium players in India. And a third project that is “on the horizon,” he says, looks into comparative vocal technique in North India.

Already Rahaim has shared some of his passions with the St. Olaf community. Apart from his teaching and research responsibilities, he helped bring his music guru, the renowned Indian vocalist Vikas Kashalkar, to St. Olaf for a performance Sept. 15 and Indian music workshop Sept. 16. He also performed with Kashalkar at the event. Feldt was thrilled with the unique performance opportunity and realizes the value of bringing different musical experiences to St. Olaf. “Music is one of those wonderful bridges that can take us from something we know to something different,” she says.

View the Sept. 15 performance here.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.