Sad news reached the World Beat desk this week that Prof Dr Terry E. Miller of Kent State University in the US passed away on Oct 1. He was 80 years old.
He was recognised as one of the leading ethnomusicologists in Southeast Asian music, particularly for his groundbreaking research on molam and the iconic khaen (free reed bamboo mouth organ) in Thailand and Laos.
Ajarn Terry was part of a friendship and research partnership with Assoc Prof Dr Jarernchai Chompairot of Mahasarakham University, who died in July.
Born in Dover, Ohio in 1945, he majored in organ performance at the College of Wooster before being drafted into the US Army in 1969. He was sent to Long Binh Base as an assistant chaplain and it was in Vietnam that he began to develop a deep interest in Southeast Asian traditional music.
Upon his return, he completed a master’s degree at Indiana University (with a thesis on American traditional shape-note singing) and then returned to Southeast Asia to do the field work for a doctoral degree; he took his family to Maha Sarakham for two years (1972-74). His research assistant was Ajarn Jarernchai who he later helped study for a master’s and doctoral degree in the USA.
Ajarn Terry’s field work collected research for a 1977 dissertation “Khaen Playing And Mawlum Singing In Northeast Thailand”. The thesis was turned into a textbook, Traditional Music Of The Lao: Kaen Playing And Mawlum Singing In Northeast Thailand, and published in 1985. It remains one of the few in English to comprehensively cover traditional music in the region.
In 1975, he began his academic career and he set up one of the first ethnomusicology departments in the USA (as Jarernchai did at Maha Sarakham University). He was a moving force behind the World Music programme at Kent State and also founded the KSU Thai Ensemble (for many years the only Thai ensemble at an American university) and Chinese Ensemble.
Ajarn Terry was a prolific writer, contributing and editing such essential reference works as The New Grove Dictionary Of Music And Musicians; The New Grove Dictionary Of Musical Instruments; and The Garland Encyclopedia Of World Music (The Garland Handbook Of Southeast Asian Music is an absolute must for anyone interested in this region’s music).
His textbook with Andrew Shahriari, World Music: A Global Journey, is used in colleges and high schools. He was also an active member and officer of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Society for Asian Music.
In 1980, he self-published the first instructional manual in the English language for playing the khaen — An Introduction To Playing The Kaen.
In addition to travelling and collecting research materials in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar, he also maintained an interest congregational singing which took him and his second wife Sara, also an ethnomusicologist, to the USA, Jamaica, Trinidad, St Vincent, Scotland and South Africa.
Ajarn Terry also had a passionate interest in covered bridges, which harked back to trips to see covered bridges with his father in the 1950s. (If you are not sure what they are, think of the movie The Bridges Of Madison County). In fact, he made a road trip just before his passing to see 55 covered bridges with a German photographer and covered bridge enthusiast. This “pastime” resulted in two illustrated books from his bridge travels, China’s Covered Bridges: Architecture Over Water and America’s Covered Bridges: Practical Crossings – Nostalgic Icons.
In his later years, Terry and Sara enjoyed ballroom dancing, which he did with his customary enthusiasm. But there was also a research angle which I also found interesting. Ballroom dancing it seems has played an important role in the development of pleng luk thung, or Thai country music; something which I could also hear in the music but which isn’t often written about. He reached the same conclusion and we shared notes on that.
Ajarn Terry influenced, inspired and mentored many students and academics but he also practically supported many musicians, too. He and the late Prof Mick Moloney (of New York University) provided a monthly stipend for one of the last molam glawn (poetic lam) artists, Khru Jammu. And when Mick Moloney set up a music programme for children at Father Joe Mauer’s Mercy Center, Ajarn Terry procured many Isan instruments like the phin and bonglang. The programme continues to flourish.
Last December, I managed to get Ajarn Terry and Ajarn Jarernchai to join me at the Jim Thompson Farm Tour to get an interview on camera. We talked on the molam stage about what it was like to conduct research in Isan during the early 1970s, when the region had many US bases. It would turn out to be one of the last times these two pioneers talked about their work. The interview is available on the Jim Thompson Farm Facebook page.