Charles Capwell

Associate Professor Emeritus

B.A., Brown University; M.A. and Ph.D., Harvard University; advanced studies in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University.

Charles Capwell’s scholarship has focused on music in northern India, particularly the region of Bengal, and has dealt with the folk music of the religious sect Baul (The Music of the Bauls of Bengal, Kent State 1986) and musical culture in late colonial Calcutta. His work on India has been presented and published in numerous national and international conferences and journals. In support of his research in India, Professor Capwell has been a senior fellow of the American Institute of Indian Studies and a Fulbright Research Scholar. More recently, he has shifted his research focus to Indonesia where he has done fieldwork on popular music in Indonesian Islam as a Fulbright Research Scholar and as an awardee of the Asian Cultural Council.

He is a past editor of Ethnomusicology and co-author of Excursions in World Music. With School of Music colleagues Thomas Turino and Isabel Wong, he was part of a team that was responsible for gaining a major grant to the University from the Ford Foundation as part of its “Crossing Borders” initiative.

I do not have a philosophy of teaching but rather one of learning.* Teaching, when “philosophized,” tends to take on too prescriptive an attitude. Professors inevitably fall back on teaching but when inspired can profess knowledge and a conviction in its importance in such a way that students will undertake to actively learn rather than passively be taught. When done well, especially with advanced students, the learning is reciprocal and the teaching mutual. A metaphor for success in this enterprise is when I can provide the match for someone else’s candle.

*"[The Author] thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes. The growth of Knowlege he rather thinks to resemble the growth of Fruit; however external causes may in some degree co-operate, 'tis the internal vigour, and virtue of the tree that must ripen the juices to their just maturity." (From the Preface to Hermes: or, a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar, by James Harris, London: 1751.)