By Jill Goetz
Anthony Seeger, curator of the Folkways Collection and director of Folkways Recordings at the Smithsonian Institution, will make his third visit to Cornell on March 24-29 as an A.D. White Pro fessor-at-Large.
On Wednesday, March 27, he will give a public talk titled "From the Suyá Indians to the Grate ful Dead: 'Thanks,'" at 4:30 p.m. in the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall. Seeger, one of the world's foremost ethnomusicologists and folklorists, will discuss the Amazon Indians' struggle to preserve their environment and culture, and their support from a nonprofit organizations founded by members of the Grateful Dead.
Seeger has conducted intensive fieldwork among several Brazilian Indian societies, including the Suyá of northern Mato Grosso. In 1981 and 1982, he directed the graduate program in social anthropology at the National Museum and taught ethnomusicology at the Brazilian Conservatory of Music, both in Rio de Janeiro.
Before joining the Smithsonian in 1988, Seeger taught anthropology and directed the archives of traditional music at Indiana University in Bloomington -- site of the nation's largest archive of American folk and traditional music, according to Martin Hatch, associate professor in music and Asian studies, who was instrumental in bringing Seeger to Cornell.
Seeger is rooted in traditional music: He is the grandson of renowned musicologist Charles Seeger, and his aunts and uncles include musicians Peggy, Mike and Pete Seeger.
In addition to giving the March 27 lecture, Seeger will lead a graduate colloquium and seminar while on campus and will meet with students and faculty interested in such topics as ecological and cultural survival, ethnomusicology and anthropology of Latin America.
Seeger, who visited Cornell last year, is one of 15 scholars currently serving six-year terms as professors-at-large at Cornell. Other professors-at-large to visit Cornell this semester include art critic Donald Kuspit (April 21-26) and chemist John Shipley Rowlinson (April 27-May 4).