Adam Grode '05, who last year went on a Watson Fellowship to study long-necked lutes in Central Asia, is getting another chance to expand his musical and cultural horizons, this time with an offered grant from the Fulbright Program to live and study in Chinese Central Asia.
“In the Chinese state of Xinjiang, longstanding state-censorship of musical compositions and public performances endangers the musical traditions of the Uyghurs, the area's largest Turkic Muslim minority,” Grode said. “Though the Uyghurs share several musical commonalities with Central Asia, it is the ustad–shagird (master-apprentice) tradition which today stands as the bedrock of their musical heritage.”
As a “Fulbrighter,” Grode will study the rawap, a highly prized Uyghur long-necked lute under an ustad and develop his linguistic proficiency in Uyghur and Mandarin.
Applying for a Fulbright was “a lot more intense,” than applying for a Watson, he said, but he was helped by Prof. Megan Ferry, who conducted his language interview for the Fulbright. Grode also cites encouragement from faculty in East Asian Studies.
Grode spoke last fall in a Perspectives at the Nott lecture on his Watson travels along the Silk Road in the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The route he followed was important commercially, but also contributed to the development of musical styles and instruments.
Unlike the Watson, which had Grode moving to a new area every few weeks, the Fulbright will allow him a full year to settle in at Xinjiang Arts Institute in the Uygur Province of northwest China. “I'm really looking forward to having an apartment,” he said.
Grode plans to start the Fulbright in September, and to explore the desert and oasis features of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region during college breaks. The province this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, and music of the region will be a major part of the celebration, Grode said.
Grode said he is hoping to pursue a Ph.D. in anthropology of ethnomusicology, perhaps one day working for organizations like the Smithsonian Institution or UNESCO and “try to make a difference.”
“Soft politics makes a difference,” he said. “You can have all the armies you want, but unless there is understanding between cultures, it's never going to happen.”
A native of Philadelphia who created his own Eurasian Studies major at Union, Grode was the 44th Union student to receive the prestigious travel-study grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. The $22,000 fellowship funded his study, “Long-necked Lutes from Baku to Bishkek: A Musical Journey in Central Asia.”
The Fulbright Program, an international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.” The program was established in under legislation introduced by then Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas in 1946. Since then, nearly 280,000 “Fulbrighters” have participated. There are about 6,000 new grants annually.