Dr. Ron Emoff

Ron Emoff is Associate Professor of Music and Anthropology at OSU-Newark. He received the PhD in ethnomusicology from University of Texas at Austin, where he also intensively studied anthropology and critical theory. While a graduate student in Austin, he actively performed various musics on, among other things, kora (a West African stringed instrument), accordion, violin, 'ud, and valiha (a stringed instrument from Madagascar).

Dr. Emoff has performed ethnographic research in Madagascar, Southwest Louisiana, and the French Antilles. His current research interests include the evocation, creation, and sustenance of memory through music, colonialism and postcolonialism, spirituality, musical constructions of self and community, and establishing histories through musical production and reception.

Dr. Emoff's research and publication activity has been funded by Fulbright and Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Grants, a Wenner Gren Foundation Richard Carley Hunt Fellowship, an Ohio State University College of the Arts Research Grant, several Ohio State University Research and Scholarly Activities Grants, an Ohio State University-Newark Seed Grant, and a grant from the Otto Kinkeldey Publication Endowment Fund of the American Musicological Society.

In 2003, Dr. Emoff was recipient of the Ohio State University at Newark Scholarly Achievement Award; he was also recipient of the 2003 OSU Newark Service Award. Dr. Emoff received the 2006 OSU Newark Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2009 he was awarded the OSU Newark annual Scholarly Accomplishment Award at the tenured professor level.

At Ohio State University-Newark, Dr. Emoff has taught Music Cultures Throughout the World, Selective History of European Music, "Ethnic," Regional, and Border Musics in the United States, World Beat in Africa, all undergraduate courses. During Fall 2003 he taught Musical Expression in a Postcolonial State, a graduate ethnomusicology seminar on the main campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, and more recently he has taught the Graduate Introduction to Ethnomusicology seminar there. Dr. Emoff has built a recording studio, sound analysis, and video production lab on the Newark campus that houses the same state-of-the-art software and hardware used in professional international recording studios. He teaches both honors and non-honors sections of a course entitled, Recording Technology and the Music Business, MUS 345.01, in this new lab space. In Spring 2010, Dr. Emoff will be teaching a graduate seminar in the Ohio State University School of Music, Columbus campus, MUS 950.01, entitled “World Cinema and World Beat.”

Dr. Emoff directs the OSU Newark Afropop ensemble, in which students learn to perform currently popular dance musics from throughout Africa. Several performances both on- and off-campus are staged by the students each quarter. He also coordinates the OSU Newark Great Performers Series, in which a diverse array of musical and other talent is presented to the Newark community.

Dr. Emoff has a joint appointment as in the OSU Department of Anthropology, and he teaches independent study and directed reading courses in Cultural Anthropology at OSU Newark. He as well serves on graduate students’ committees in the OSU Anthropology Department.

Dr. Emoff's Publications Books
	2009	Music and the Performance of Identity on Marie-Galante, French Antilles. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Press, SOAS Musicology Series.
	2002	RECOLLECTING FROM THE PAST Musical Practice and Spirit Possession on the East Coast of Madagascar. Wesleyan University Press, Music and Culture Series.
	2002	Mementos, Artifacts, and Hallucinations from the Ethnograper's Tent. London and NY: Routledge Press.
Documentary Films
	2009	The Presence of the Past: Madagascar, Music, and Devotion. New York: Lyrichord Discs, Inc., Ethnographic Film Series (DVD [54 minutes] with accompanying CD of additional musical examples, extensive notes, photos, and glossary of Malagasy terms).
Encyclopedia Entry
	2008	“Musical Practices on Madagascar: An Overview.” In Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc.
Journal Articles
	2008	“Truth, Talk, and History in the Non-Nation: Gwo Ka’s Place on Marie-Galante, French Antilles.” Ethnomusicology Forum (British Journal of Ethnomusicology).
	In progress	“Spiritism, Ecological Peril, Insularity: Malagasy World Beat.”
	2003	“Direct Current Recall,” TDR (The Drama Review), 47(3): 32-44. New York University/MIT Press. Richard Schechner, ed.
	2002	“Phantom Nostalgia and Recollecting (from) the Colonial Past in Tamatave, Madagascar,” Ethnomusicology, 46 (2): 265-283.
	2002	“Alterations in Accordion Structure on the East Coast of Madagascar.” Musical Performance, 3(2-4): 243-257. London: Harwood Academic Publishers, Taylor and Francis Group.
	2000	“Clinton, Bush, and Hussein in Madagascar.” In The World of Music, Vol. 3.
	2000	As guest editor, preface to The World of Music, Vol. 3.
	1998	“A Cajun Poetics of Loss and Longing.” Ethnomusicology, 42(2):283-301.
Book Chapters
	In press	“Tromba Children, Maresaka, and Postcolonial Malady in Madagascar.” In Austronesian Soundscapes. Performing Arts in Oceania and Southeast Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (IIAS Series), Birgit Abels, ed.
	2004	“Spitting into the Wind: Multi-Edged Environmentalism in Malagasy Song.” In Island Musics, Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, Kevin Dawe, ed.
	2003	“Material Media of Maresaka: Tromba Spirit Possession on the East Coast of Madagascar.” In The Interrelatedness of Music, Religion and Ritual in African Performance Practice. UK: Mellen Press, Daniel Avorgbedor, ed.
	2002	“Wildness in the Heart of Town.” In Mementos, Artifacts, and Hallucinations from the Ethnographer’s Tent. London and NY: Routledge Press Ron Emoff and David Henderson, eds.
	2002	“Introduction.” In Mementos, Artifacts, and Hallucinations from the Ethnographer’s Tent. London and NY: Routledge Press. Ron Emoff and David Henderson, eds.
Compact Discs
	2004	VINELO: Maître du maro vany (valiha Antandroy) de Madagascar. Compact disc sound recording of my field tapes; includes 10 page booklet of notes and photograph. Genève, Switzerland: VDE Gallo, CD 1140.
	2003	“Antandroy Tromba Spirit Possession music by Magnampy Soa,” 3 sample tracks of original field recordings in Madagascar for People, Places, and Change, Music of the World, CD that accompanies school text book. Austin, TX: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston.
	2001	Spirit Musics from the East Coast of Madagascar. Paris:UNESCO/ Naive. Compact disc sound recording of my field tapes; includes 10 page booklet of notes and photographs. Auvidis 065, D8282.
	2001	Accordions and Ancestral Spirits, CD with booklet of extensive notes and photographs, Genève, Switzerland: VDE Gallo, CD 1065.
Photographs
	2000	Cover photo, entitled “Le musicien malgache Tsiariagna jouant de l’akordôgna,” of Cahiers de musiques traditionelles, “Métissages,” vol. 13.
Reviews
	2009	Keeping the Embers Alive: Musicians of Zimbabwe by Myrna Capp, In Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, 65 (3): 514-516.
	2007	The Rough Guide to the Music of Madagascar: Valiha & Marovany: The Real Soundtrack to Madagascar, 2005. One compact disc. World Music Network (UK) RGNET 1163 CD. Booklet (11 pp.) with notes in English by Ian Anderson. In Ethnomusicology 51 (1): 159-62.
	2006	The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar by Michael J. Lambek. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Ethnos 71(2): 282-3.
	2006	René Lacaille, Mapou. Compact disc. Riverboat Records/World Music Network, (UK) TUGCD1033. Booklet (18 pp.) with notes in French and English, and song texts in French, English, and Créole French (notes by René Lacaille). In Ethnomusicology 50 (1).
	2003	Madagascar côte ouest: Antandroy, Masikoro, Vezo. 2001. Recorded in Madagascar in 1963 by Charles Duvelle. Prophet 25, Philips Music Group France. One compact disc (51’ 19’’). Booklet, 19 pages with notes in French and English by Charles Duvelle; photos, map. In Ethnomusicology (47) 2: 278-80.
	2001	Rakoto Frah, Flute Master of Madagascar (CD, Globe Style Recording). In Yearbook for Traditional Music.
	2001	Madagascar: Musique des Sakalava Menabe/Hommage à Mama Sana (CD, Inedit, Maison de Cultures de Monde). In Yearbook for Traditional Music.
	2000	Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe by Thomas Turino, University of Chicago Press. In Current Musicology, volume #70, pp. 158-163.
	1999	Madagascar: Awakening the Spirits: Music in Tromba and Bilo Trance Rituals (CD). In Yearbook For Traditional Music.
	1998	The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 1, Africa . Ruth Stone, ed. In Notes.
	1998	Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology by Paul Théberge, Wesleyan University Press. In Notes.
	1998	Nightsong: Performance, Power, and Practice in South Africa by Veit Erlmann, University of Chicago Press. In American Ethnologist.
Recent Invited Papers
	2008	Resurrecting Place in the Non-Nation: Accordions,, Drumming, and the Subsurreal on Marie-Galante, French Antilles, presented as part of the OSU Newark Dean’s Faculty Lecture Series.
	2007	Tromba Children, Maresaka, and Healing Efficacy on the East Coast of Madagascar, panel paper given at biennial Psychological Anthropology meeting, Los Angeles.
	2007	Truth, Talk, and History in the Non-Nation: Gwo Ka’s Place on Marie-Galante, French Antilles, paper presented at the OSU School of Music Musicology Colloquium.
	2005	Official Versions of History in the Non-Nation: Drumming on Marie-Galante, French West Indies, panel paper given at annual Society for Ethnomusicology meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
	2003	Chair of panel entitled, A Memory for Semblance, Society for Ethnomusicology meeting, Miami, Florida; presentation on this panel of paper entitled, Négritude on Marie-Galante: The Subsurreal and Looking Back on an out of the Way Place.
	2003	Spitting into the Wind: Multi-edged Environmentalism in Malagasy Popular Song. Indiana University Guest Scholar Colloquium, hosted by the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and the Department of African Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington.
	2003	Négritude on Marie-Galante: The Subsurreal and Looking Back on an out of the Way Place, paper given as part of panel A Memory for Semblance, at annual Society for Ethnomusicology meeting in Miami, Florida.
	2003	Mementos, Artifacts, and Hallucinations from the Ethnographer’s Tent, presented at St. Lawrence University, Department of Music.
	2003	Musical Négritude on Marie-Galante, French Antilles. Ohio State University, School of Music, Guest Lecture Colloquium.
	2002	Ethnography’s Nervous System: Recent Fieldwork on Marie-Galante. University of Virginia, School of Music Guest Speaker Colloquium.
	2002	Squeezing the Hyphen out of Tex-Mex: Norteño Accordion in Texas.OSU-Columbus, Multi-Cultural Center, panel for Latin American Awareness Month.
	2002	Direct-Current Recall–Guest Lecturer Series, School of Music, Ohio State University, Columbus.
	2001	Clinton, Bush, and Hussein in Madagascar–Ohio State University-Newark faculty presentation.