Event Archive

Asian Studies Faculty and Students

Join us for comfort food and conversation.

Meghan Hynson, colloquium: "A Balinese "Call to Prayer": Sounding Religious Nationalism and Local Identity in the Puja Tri Sandhya"

Reception available on the Humanities Center's outdoor porch after the presentation.

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In this presentation, Prof. Hynson examines the Puja Tri Sandhya, a Balinese Hindu prayer that has been broadcast into the soundscape of Bali since 2001. By charting the development of the prayer, she explores the religious politics of post-independence Indonesia, which called for the Balinese to adopt the Puja Tri Sandhya as a condition for religious legitimacy in the new nation. The Puja Tri Sandhya is likened to a Balinese “call to prayer” and compared to Muslim and Christian soundings of religion in the archipelago to assert how these broadcasts sonically reify the national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (“Unity in Diversity”), and participate in a sounding of religious nationalism. The sonic components of the Puja Tri Sandhya (when it is sounded, the vocal style, and the gender wayangand genta bell accompaniment) are also discussed and argued to infuse the invented display of religiosity with authority and facilitate a mediation between technology, space, and local identity.   Meghan Hynson is a visiting assistant professor of music at the University of San Diego. She received a BM in Music Education from Boston University, and her MA and PhD in Ethnomusicology from UCLA. She was most recently an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Monmouth University and has also served as a faculty member at Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Hynson has spent over a decade living and studying in Southeast Asia, where she has conducted extensive research on religious and gender politics in the performing arts of Bali and West Java, Indonesia. She has offered globally-oriented courses such as World Music, Global Popular Music, Music and Gender, and Music and Religion. From 2016-2019, she was the director of the University of Pittsburgh Gamelan Ensemble and, in 2019, toured internationally as a vocalist for the Indonesian pop band, the Dangdut Cowboys, under the invitation of the US State Department. Throughout her career, she has developed world music curricula and outreach programs for K-12 schools, worked with major museums and international world music festivals, and been the voice for global diversity through music via various campus and community activities.

Meghan Hynson, PhD, is Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at the University of San Diego.

A Music Department, Asian Studies and Humanities Center Collaboration.