Brita Heimarck

Brita Renée Heimarck, PhD in Music, Cornell University; MA in Ethnomusicology, UCLA; BA Magna Cum Laude with Honors in Music, Brown University.

Dr. Heimarck is Associate Professor of Music at Boston University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate seminars in ethnomusicology, world music, and theoretical or interdisciplinary topics, including Music and Mysticism, Music and Ritual, and Sacred Music East and West. Heimarck specializes in the shadow play music of Bali, Indonesia and South Asian devotional music, with an interest in modernization, music and politics, and theorizations of the sacred in music. She is the author of Balinese Discourses on Music and Modernization: Village Voices and Urban Views (Routledge, 2003), and Gender Wayang Music of Bapak I Wayan Loceng from Sukawati, Bali: A Musical Biography, Musical Ethnography, and Critical Edition (A-R Editions, 2015). She has also published several chapters and essays in edited volumes: “A “Gust of Fresh Air”: Brian Jones, Assemblage, and World Music,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones, Coelho and Covach, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2019): 237-266; “Waves of Emphasis and the Effects of Modernization in the Balinese Shadow Theater,” in Puppet Theater in Contemporary Indonesia: New Approaches to Performance-Events, ed. Mrazek (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002): 255-270; and “Ethnomusicology: Theory and Method,” and “Indonesia,” in The Reader’s Guide to Music: History, Theory, Criticism, ed. Steib (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999): 225-28, 317-19. Her most recent article, “Music as a Spiritual Tool and Religious Ritual Accompaniment” is forthcoming in Musicological Annual (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2022).

Dr. Heimarck combines knowledge of music in its cultural and historical context with critical theory, non-Western discourses, and performance. Professor Heimarck has received numerous grants and awards for her work in ethnomusicology, including a Fulbright Award for music studies in Bali, Indonesia (1985–86), a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship for doctoral studies in ethnomusicology (1993–97), and a Jon B. Higgins Memorial Scholarship for studies of Indian flute music with the great bansuri master Hariprasad Chaurasia in Bombay, India (1993). She has also received funding from the BU Center for the Humanities, the BU Arts Initiative, and the BU Center for the Study of Asia for her publications, conferences, and performances.

Professor Heimarck founded the doctoral program in ethnomusicology at Boston University (since 2007) and has guided many graduate students in this context. She also founded the bostonethno.org website, and served as President of the Northeast Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology 2010-2013. Heimarck is currently Co-Chair of a the ICTM Study Group on Music and Allied Arts of Greater South Asia (2016-present); we organized a major international conference held in Sri Lanka in Fall of 2019. She is also a founding member of the new ICTM study group on Music, Religion, and Spirituality that held its first conference in August of 2021 in Slovenia and online. In 2019 and 2020 Heimarck served the Society for Ethnomusicology as Chair of the Bruno Nettl Prize Committee, which entailed reviewing and evaluating numerous publication submissions and selecting the Prize winner along with the committee. She has also served on the Trustee Scholars Committee for Boston University in 2021 and 2022.

In April of 2018 Dr. Heimarck organized an important Symposium and Concert at Boston University drawing together a wide range of ethnomusicologists focused on diverse yogic traditions. These research presentations enumerated the sacred sound philosophies and practices of yogic traditions practiced in the U.S. based on a combination of historical, ethnographic, and critical sacred sound studies never compiled before. Drawing on the numerous scholarly contributions to this symposium and additional chapters Heimarck has solicited from scholars in the fields of ethnomusicology, religious studies, Sanskrit, music education, composition and music theory, Heimarck is editing a significant new volume entitled, Yogic Traditions and Sacred Sound Practices in the United States. Publication of this volume is strongly anticipated in the next academic year 2022-23 and it includes two chapters by Professor Heimarck.

Publications

Currently working on an Edited Volume entitled, Yogic Traditions and Sacred Sound Practices in the United States, developed from the Symposium I organized and hosted April 6, 2018 at Boston University. I organized a symposium with 15 presenters from all across the United States, followed by an evening concert in Marsh Chapel with 10 Guest Artists and several ensembles.

• “Music as a Spiritual Tool and Religious Ritual Accompaniment.” Presented in the Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music, Religion, and Spirituality,” Slovenia, August 2021. To be published in a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed online journal, Musicological Annual (forthcoming in June, 2022). Submitted.
• “A “Gust of Fresh Air”: Brian Jones, Assemblage, and World Music.” Chapter in The Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones, Victor Coelho and John Covach, eds. Cambridge University Press (Oct. 2019): 237-266.
• Balinese Gender Wayang (Shadow Play) Music of Bapak I Wayan Loceng, from Sukawati, Bali, Indonesia: A Musical Biography, Musical Ethnography, and Critical Edition. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Inc., Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music (April, 2015).
• Edition of music with transcriptions and a substantial cultural introduction to the shadow play music of Sukawati, Bali, Indonesia. This book also contains biographical background on Loceng and an extensive theoretical framework with a new definition for the field of ethnomusicology. Digital recordings and plates included.
• Balinese Discourses on Music and Modernization: Village Voices and Urban Views. Current Research in Ethnomusicology Vol. 5. New York: Routledge, 2003.
• “Waves of Emphasis and the Effects of Modernization in the Balinese Shadow Theater,” in Puppet Theater in Contemporary Indonesia: New Approaches to Performance-Events, edited by Jan Mrazek, 255-270. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
• “Ethnomusicology: Theory and Method,” and “Indonesia.” In The Reader’s Guide to Music: History, Theory, Criticism, edited by Murray Steib, 225-28, 317-19. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999.

Awards

Professor Heimarck has received numerous grants and awards for her work in ethnomusicology, including a Fulbright Award for music studies in Bali, Indonesia (1985–86), a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship for doctoral studies in ethnomusicology (1993–97), and a Jon B. Higgins Memorial Scholarship for studies of Indian flute music with the great bansuri master Hariprasad Chaurasia in Bombay, India (1993). She has also received funding from the BU Center for the Humanities, the BU Arts Initiative, and the BU Center for the Study of Asia for her publications, conferences, and performances.