Jesse Johnston

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in brief

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Hello! Dobrý den! Kumusta!

I am an ethnomusicologist, archivist, and librarian. My research is focused on music cultures of Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and the United States centering on themes of performance studies, globalization, music and media, digital and material cultures, and information (music libraries and archives). I recently completed the MSI in archives at the University of Michigan School of Information and a PhD in Ethnomusicology at the School of Music. While at Michigan, I received a Regents Fellowship, Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships from the Centers for Russian and East European Studies and Southeast Asian Studies, and a Rackham Humanities Dissertation Fellowship. My research was recognized for exceptional potential and value in 2005 when I received a Fulbright grant to complete my doctoral research, in 2008 when I received the Louise Cuyler Award from the UM Department of Musicology, and again in 2012 when I received the Margaret Mann Award from the UM School of Information.

I am particularly interested in audiovisual archiving, music libraries, and the development of research in Eastern European traditional musics. I have previously held positions as an instructor on the music faculty at the Bowling Green State University and the University of Michigan–Dearborn, and I have worked on the music library staff at the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the University of Michigan Bands.

 

Academic Profile

My dissertation on the cimbalom in Moravia (Czech Republic) examined the cultural history of the instrument in Central Europe, the embodied/enactive interface between people and musical instruments, and the place of traditional music in the Czech Republic in the postsocialist culture in the European Union.

I am an active teacher and interested in the pedagogies of teaching musicology and research skills. I have served on the faculties of Bowling Green State University and the University of Michigan–Dearborn, where I taught classroom and online courses in ethnomusicology, world music, music appreciation, and music history. In recognition of my interest in teaching while a graduate student, I was selected as a Michigan Teaching Fellow in 2007 and participated in the selective Preparing Future Faculty Seminar sponsored by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching.

My articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, Národopisná revue, Kosmas Central Europe Review, Asian Music, and Notes. I was also commissioned to rewrite the entry on Czech-American music for the second edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music (Oxford Univ. Press). I have presented my work at meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and the Czech and Slovak Society of Arts and Sciences, as well as in lectures at Oxford University, Charles University (Prague), the University of the Philippines, and the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments (University of Michigan). Click here to view a more complete list of my publications.

 

Research

My main research investigates musical instruments as “technologies” that center social connections, musical practices, bodily techniques, and institutions across musical communities. I have made an in-depth investigation of how the cimbalom, an instrument common through Central and Eastern Europe, came to be identified specifically with Moravian traditional music and culture despite many strong associations with Romani music, Budapest cafes, and other string band types throughout the Carpathians.

In elaborating the concept of musical instruments, I theorized the concept of “cultural organology” in my dissertation, which is a study of musical instruments as meaningful objects that can only be fully understood at the intersection of historical, political, social, and physical networks. My dissertation was supervised by my advisors Judith Becker and Amy K. Stillman, Joseph Lam, Christi-Anne Castro, and Michael D. Kennedy. My research has been recognized and supported by the Czech Fulbright Commission, the Ethnology Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Brno branch), Rackham Graduate School, Masaryk University, and the U.S. Department of Education.

 

Etc . . .

In less academic endeavors, I have played music at, performed, and sometimes even worked in a variety of places. I’m currently participating in the Filipino kulintang ensemble in Ann Arbor, and I’ve been a longtime member of the University of Michigan’s “Kyai Telaga Madu” Javanese gamelan. I was a DJ and volunteer on-air engineer for two years at WCBN–FM Ann Arbor.