AMS Newsletter Highlight

This year, three of the largest professional organizations for scholarly researchers in music – the American Musicological Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the Society for Music Theory – are meeting jointly in New Orleans. This is shaping up to be a very exciting conference, and the AMS portion of the program has already been announced. I will be presenting a paper on the music of Mauritius, entitled “The Rise and Fall of Classical Music in Colonial Mauritius, ‘The Little Paris’ of the Indian Ocean.”

For those who know where Mauritius is and know what it looks like (see the visual aides below), it’s a very interesting place even before you learn anything about the music. Who wouldn’t want to visit a beautiful tropical island?

South-by-southwest from India and east of Madagascar; watch out for cyclones.

Balaklava Beach – one of my favorite spots to watch the sunset.

There’s even a brief shout-out in the latest AMS Newsletter  – that’s Volume 42, No. 2 (August 2012) for those of you keeping track of things. There will be discussion of priests, pirates, and opera singers and all the fun hijinks they were up to as part of the island’s very active colonial music scene in the 18th and 19th centuries.