Prof. Ann Lucas wins "Bruno Nettl prize" award

The Music Department warmly congratulates Associate Professor Lucas who was awarded the prestigious "Bruno Nettl prize" by the Society for Ethnomusicology at their recent annual meeting. The "Bruno Nettl prize" is given to the best monograph that illuminates the relationship between the history of Ethnomusicology and the history of music writ large. This year, the award was given to Associate Professor Ann E. Lucas for her book Music of a Thousand Years. Beyond the prize's recognition of important contributions of scholarship, this year's award is especially appropriate since the late Bruno Nettl himself was first and foremost a scholar of Persian music.

Iran’s particular system of traditional Persian art music has been long treated as the product of an ever-evolving, ancient Persian culture. In Music of a Thousand Years, Ann E. Lucas argues that this music is a modern phenomenon indelibly tied to changing notions of Iran’s national history. Rather than considering a single Persian music history, Lucas demonstrates cultural dissimilarity and discontinuity over time, bringing to light two different notions of music-making in relation to premodern and modern musical norms. An important corrective to the history of Persian music, Music of a Thousand Years is the first work to align understandings of Middle Eastern music history with current understandings of the region’s political history.

Our heartfelt congratulations to Professor Lucas!