Kati Szego
Professor
Ethnomusicology
B. Mus. (Queen’s)
M.A. (Hawaii)
PhD. (Washington)
Kati Szego joined the School of Music at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1995, establishing its program in ethnomusicology. Kati’s interest in cultural border-crossing led her to study the colonial history of music and dance education at the Kamehameha Schools, a K-12 academy for Native Hawaiians in Honolulu. Since then, her work has focused on Hawai‘i and she continues to combine ethnographic and phenomenological approaches with archival research. Ongoing projects on Hawaiian choral music, falsetto singing and yodelling are subsumed by her larger interests in intercultural processes and discourses on vocal production. She is also in the process of reconstructing and interpreting an opera libretto written by Queen Lili‘uokalani, Hawai‘i's last reigning monarch. Seeking research sites closer to home, while continuing to pursue Oceanic themes, Kati is currently examining the roles of women in the ‘ukulele revival that is now sweeping North America and Europe.
Former sound review editor of the Journal of American Folklore, Kati was General Editor of the Yearbook for Traditional Music, the flagship journal of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) from 2014 to 2017, inclusive. With Beverley Diamond, Kati co-chaired the local arrangements committee for the 2011 ICTM World Conference in St. John’s and was Acting Director of the Research Centre for Music, Media & Place (MMaP) from 2011-13 and 2015-16. She co-chaired the program committee for the July 2022 ICTM world conference held in Lisbon, Portugal, and is currently editing conference issues of the Yearbook for Traditional Music.
Recent Publications
2021 “Kinetic Songscapes: Intersensorial Listening to Hula Ku’i Songs.” In Perspectives in Motion: Engaging the Visual in Dance and Music, ed. Kendra Stepputat and Brian Diettrich. New York: Berghahn Books, pp, 19-40. [Honorable Mention, ICTM 2022 Article Prize]
2018 "Singing Policemen, Dancing Firemen: Alliance-building and Interethnic Remasculinization in Post-WWII Hawai‘i.” In Making Waves: Traveling Musics in Hawai‘i, Asia and the Pacific, ed. Christine R. Yano and Frederick Lau. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, pp. 119-48.