It is with great sorrow that we share the news of the passing of Elspeth Poultney Wissner and Dr. Anicet Mundundu, who earned degrees from the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. 

Our guest for this episode of the Music at Pitt Podcast is recent graduate Mariam Shalaby. Mariam graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2018 with a BPhil in Music through the Honors College and Department of Music and a BS in Natural Sciences. She is a first generation Egyptian American now in her second year at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey.

Doctoral candidate and Fulbright Scholar Steven Moon had to cut his research year in Turkey short due to the pandemic, but he has still made significant progress in exploring the intersection of culture and medicine in that country. Moon is studying the role of music in Ottoman healing practices with specific interest in how this approach transcends mind/body dualisms.

Our guests on this edition of the Music at Pitt Podcast are Ethnomusicology Visiting Lecturer Jay Arms and undergraduate Music Major Julie Wachtel. Jay leads the University Gamelan and Julia is a member of the gamelan and wrote a research paper about her experience of learning about gamelan music and performance. We begin the podcast with an excerpt from the University Gamelan’s April 2019 performance of Bima Mobos, a piece about Bima, one of the pandawa brothers from the Mahabarata.