This posted was updated April 23 at 7:38 p.m.

Mei-Chen Chen is unearthing the fruits of ethnomusicological documentation.

This Wednesday at the Schoenberg Music Building, the ethnomusicologist will walk the UCLA community through her experiences uncovering missionary Joseph Lenherr’s field recordings of Indigenous Taiwanese tribes’ music. Lenherr conducted musicological field work in Taiwan for seven months in 1965, Chen said. In Wednesday’s lecture, Chen will review his collection of field recordings, focusing on the meaning behind Lenherr’s work, as well as the value these archival recordings hold for present-day Indigenous Taiwanese communities, she said. Chen hopes to invite collaborative discussion and conversation regarding her and Lenherr’s work through this lecture, she added.

“The contents are very valuable because it’s not only for scholars (who) can study those different genres of music, but also they are valuable for the Indigenous groups,” Chen said. “A lot of traditional songs are not transmitted anymore, so these recordings can be the material for them to revitalize this traditional music.”

As a religious missionary, Lenherr’s goal with his musicological fieldwork was to encourage Indigenous Taiwanese communities to compose Indigenous church music, Chen said. Because of this, the collection also serves as documentation of the history of Indigenous Taiwanese church music, Chen added.

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When she was a doctoral student in the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music Department of Ethnomusicology, Chen said she worked at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, where she specialized in audio preservation. In this role, she was able to take part in the repatriation of one of the archive’s collections to Taiwan, Chen said. Recently, the Ethnomusicology Archive has repatriated the Joseph Lenherr collection to a university in Taiwan and is in contact with Indigenous Taiwanese scholars in efforts to further understand the field recordings, said Maureen Russell, archivist at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive.

Through this experience, not only did Chen learn more about various collections in the archive, but she said she also gained further interest in the preservation of cultural heritage, especially of Indigenous communities. Chen added that she continues to center collaboration with community members in her research. She said she is influenced by the field of applied ethnomusicology, where scholars focus their work on practical social improvement and benefit for the communities whose music is studied.

“The role of (the) Ethnomusicology Archive is very important,” Chen said. “I noticed this collection last year, and it had been buried there for more than maybe 50 or 60 years. There’s really a lot of treasure there.”

Chen said she hopes more students outside of the ethnomusicology department utilize this resource and use the archive to explore the music of their personal traditions and culture. The Ethnomusicology Archive and its collections are available online through the UCLA Library’s catalog, Chen said, adding that the archive is also an important resource for scholars and students beyond ethnic studies fields. Because of her experiences exploring the archive, Chen said she has become further interested in the traditional music of Indigenous Taiwanese communities, while before her research focused on the cultural policies of the Taiwanese government and their influence on music.

“I’m always learning from the collections that deposit in the archive,” Chen said.

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Chen’s lecture is part of the Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy Colloquium Series, which celebrates the legacy of the founding chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology and Systematic Musicology at UCLA. Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, who primarily studied Indian music, influenced Chen’s documentation of music, she said. Publications director and events coordinator for the ethnomusicology department Kathleen Hood said previous Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy Colloquium Series talks can be accessed through the Ethnomusicology Archive.

The talk is also co-sponsored by the ethnomusicology department and the UCLA Asia Pacific Center. Chen said she feels very grateful to have the opportunity to share her work and research with a co-curricular community. Chen added that in the future, she would like to work with other scholars and Indigenous groups in Taiwan to repatriate these recordings back to the communities featured in the recordings. Furthermore, she said she hopes her lecture will spark further participation between herself, community members and other scholars, and also inspire future research into the collection.

“This is just a start point,” Chen said. “It lets community members know of the collections, and we can have more opportunities to do a lot of collaborations and discussions that are very important.”