Song in the Sumatran Highlands

Project Team

Jennifer Fraser 

Roles: Principal Investigator, Site Designer & Development, Author, and Editor. 
Bio:  Jennifer Fraser is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthropology at Oberlin College. Her first book, Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia, investigates the ways Minangkabau people in West Sumatra, Indonesia, use radically different sounding gong ensembles to negotiate community, ethnicity, and their place in the world. But since publishing that book, she's been exploring community-engaged work and re-envisioning the way ethnographic knowledge is shared, resulting in this Digital Humanities project. 
Email: jfraser@oberlin.edu
Website: https://www.oberlin.edu/jennifer-fraser
 

Sumatra-Based Contributors

 

Saiful Hadi

Roles: Collaborator in and Co-Designer of Ethnographic Research 2015-2016
Bio: Still to come

 

 

 

Dr. Arzul Jama'an 

Roles: Host Father, Consultant on Research Design, and Transcription of Song Texts
Bio: Still to come

 

 

Martis

Roles: Research Collaborator and Teacher for Ethnographic Fieldwork 2003-2004 
Bio: Still to come

 



 

 

Mak Il St. Rajo Endah

Roles: Research Collaborator and Teacher for Ethnographic Fieldwork 2003-2004 
 

 

 

 

 

U.S.-Based Contributors

Gabriela Linares

Role: Assistant Site Designer & Builder
BioGabriela Linares, a Puerto Rican ethnomusicologist in training and a singer, is a recent graduate from Oberlin Conservatory who will be starting her masters degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the Fall of 2021. She has collaborated with Jennifer Fraser on various projects including this site, Song in the Sumatran Highlands, since the summer of 2020. Gabriela worked on mapping places into an interactive map that is powered by google, from where these peoples and then music mobilized. She also contributed to creating individual pages for each place, person, song, and type of song. Throughout this process Gabriela began to grasp the ongoing history that was lived by musicians within the saluang genre. As the project took the form of a website, she was able to connect material notes, songs and their individual renditions at different performances through hyperlinks, revealing the ways in which the material is intertwined.  In addition, Gabriela contributed the idea of an interactive timeline that gives users an evolving experience of each performance. She is a strong believer in and advocate for the digital humanities. She believes that the digital humanities have allowed us to access multimodal ways of presenting and engaging with materials. 

 

Megan S. Mitchell

Role: Technical Consultant for Digital Humanities & Scalar
Bio: Academic Engagement & Digital Initiatives Coordinator Oberlin College Libraries

 

 

 

 

Benjamin Simonson

Role: Map Designer (designed maps of Alam Minangkabau, Darek, & Rantau)
Contact​: ​​​Ben Simonson, Designer @ simonson.design

 

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