Senior Kara Schamell’s research into the meaning of a spiritual Zimbabwean music form played on an indigenous instrument and its transformation as a secular art form embraced in the World Music industry won recognition as the best undergraduate project of the year at a regional anthropology conference.

March 7, 2008

Senior Kara Schamell's research into the meaning of a spiritual Zimbabwean music form played on an indigenous instrument and its transformation as a secular art form embraced in the World Music industry won recognition as the best undergraduate project of the year at a regional anthropology conference.

"When Sounds and Spirits Go Global: Mbira Musicianship Abroad," written by Schamell for her senior thesis, took the prize as the best undergraduate student paper at the 2008 Greater Boston Anthropology Consortium Student Conference, held recently at Brandeis University.

The anthropology major's work analyzes how a traditional form of Zimbabwean music is transformed by its popularization outside Zimbabwe's Shona culture. The research grew out of ethnomusicology and anthropology courses Schamell took at Wheaton, starting with the class "Music and Worship in World Cultures" taught by Julie Searles.

"I played several instruments growing up in a very musical family, but by the time I came to college, I had really put that all behind me," said Schamell, who counts the alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute and xylophone among the instruments she has learned to play. "What got me interested in World Music was the realization that I could study music as it is embedded in a culture, much like I had studied many other cultural practices through anthropology." The result, she said: "I fell in love with music all over again."

More to the point, Schamell became fascinated with indigenous world music forms and with the mbira, an instrument of Zimbabwe's Shona people. Sometimes referred to as an African "thumb piano," the mbira is played traditionally in Shona religious rituals and holds an iconic place in Zimbabwean culture and national identity. At the same time, however, the polyphonic and polyrhythmic qualities of mbira music can often be heard in the secular realm of the popular World Music genre.

"I have come to realize that in Zimbabwe, sacred and secular, continuity and change, modernity and tradition, coexist," she said.

Schamell began her research last spring by familiarizing herself with scholarly work on the mbira, and by bringing Solomon Murungu to the Lyon's Den for a lecture and demonstration on mbira. During the summer of 2007, she conducted research at the International Library of African Music, an affiliate of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, and studied the mbira with a Zimbabwean graduate student. Her research in southern Africa last summer ('07) was supported by a Davis Fellowship grant and culminated in her senior thesis in Anthropology. Professor of Anthropology Bruce Owens served as her major advisor.

Schamell was not the only Wheaton student to win recognition at the conference. Ashley Smith '08 (Anthropology and French Studies) won the prize for best student question, and Katherine Niemczyk '08 (Anthropology and Sociology) won commendation for her entry to the new film category with her trailer
"Bearing Arms, Bearing Witness: Veterans Against the Iraq War." Ashley Smith and Kira Munk-Wells '08 (Anthropology) also presented papers at the conference.

The Greater Boston Anthropology Consortium Student Conference included graduate and undergraduate papers, poster sessions, and films from the six participating institutions, Brandeis, Clark, Olin, Tufts, Wellesley, and Wheaton. This is the fifth student conference sponsored by the consortium and the first at which Wheaton students have presented their senior thesis work.