Scholar Elizabeth Le Guin Receives 2019 Guggenheim Grant
UCLA Professor Receives Guggenheim Fellowship for Community Music Project
Elisabeth Le Guin, a distinguished professor of musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has been awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The fellowship, which marks the 95th year of the program, is offered to scholars, writers, and artists based on prior achievement and exceptional promise.
Le Guin, who is also the chair of the musicology department at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music, will be using her Guggenheim Fellowship to work on the El Cancionero de Santa Ana project. This community-based initiative, which she is coordinating with local musicians and activists at El Centro Cultural de México, aims to reflect, translate, and enhance the complex cultural life of the largely Mexican immigrant community in Santa Ana, California.
The El Cancionero de Santa Ana project will involve archival and community collaboration to preserve and interpret songs from Santa Ana. Le Guin's dual allegiances—as a performer and musicologist—will be evident in this project, manifesting as a series of dialogues between theory and practice.
Le Guin's expertise lies in Latin American music and culture, particularly Mexican and Mexican American music traditions. Her work has been recognised with the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016 and the Kinkeldey Prize from the American Musicological Society in 2015 for her second book, "The Tonadilla in Performance."
This year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded 168 fellowships to scholars and artists across 49 disciplines and fields from 75 academic institutions. The age range of the 2023 class of Guggenheim Fellows spans from 29 to 85 years old, and the fellowships do not specify the nationality of the recipients.
In addition to Le Guin, other UCLA professors who have been awarded Guggenheim Fellowships this year include Catherine Opie, a professor of photography, and Lothar von Falkenhausen, a professor of Chinese archaeology and art history, both of whom have been recognised for their outstanding work in their respective fields. Sylvan Oswald, a professor of drama at UCLA, was also honoured with a Guggenheim Fellowship.
While specific details about Le Guin's work on the El Cancionero de Santa Ana project are not yet available, her previous work in community-based song collections and ethnomusicological research suggests that this project will be an exciting addition to her already impressive body of work. For more precise and updated information, it would be advisable to consult UCLA’s musicology department website or Guggenheim Fellowship announcements.
Education and self-development will continue to be at the forefront of Elisabeth Le Guin's endeavors, as she utilizes her Guggenheim Fellowship to further the El Cancionero de Santa Ana project, which combines academic research with community outreach to preserve and interpret songs from Santa Ana. Despite the project's focus on music, it also promises to cater to entertainment, offering a unique blend of theory and practice in the realm of Latin American music.
