Sylvia Bruinders MA Wesleyan University
Ethnomusicology

Sylvia Bruinders is currently teaching African and African diasporic musics at undergraduate level as well as musical ethnography and ethnomusicological theory and method at post-graduate level.

She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois and is researching music of the Western Cape. Her primary interests are to investigate processes of cultural transmission within certain communities and to develop an understanding of the processes involved in maintaining distinct musical cultures in a diverse society. She also wants to explore how social and political processes impact upon creative expressions, and investigate the current political identities of communities in the Western Cape.

She completed the Honours degree in Musicology at UCT in 1995 where she was introduced to the study of Ethnomusicology. In 1997 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study Ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, USA. Wesleyan University has a renowned World Music programme and she was fortunate to study West African drumming with Abraham Adzenyah, a master drummer from Ghana, as well as Brazilian Samba, Caribbean Steelband, the kora, and jazz (mallet) percussion. Her Master’s thesis, under the supervision of Su Zheng, investigated informal musical instruction in community structures in Cape Town.

After completing the Master of Arts degree in 1999, she left for the University of Illinois to study for the doctorate degree in Ethnomusicology. Here, she attended performance ensembles such as Zimbabwean Mbira and drumming, as well as Balinese and Javanese Gamelan. She also participated in cultural exchange programs and studied with local musicians and music teachers for a month in Bali, May/June 2000 and in Zimbabwe, May/June 2001. At the University of Illinois she has been mentored by Tom Turino and Donna Buchanan

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