Elizabeth Clendinning
Professor of Music
Ethnomusicology, music of Bali
- clendiea@wfu.edu
- 336.758.5026
- M315 Scales Fine Arts Center
Elizabeth A. Clendinning is an ethnomusicologist and interdisciplinary scholar whose work explores how sound, music, and performance shape understandings of culture, place, history, identity, and cultural difference. Her research and teaching connect ethnomusicology with sound studies, music theory and approaches to musical analysis, museum studies, performance and media studies, and cultural heritage and preservation.
Clendinning’s scholarship examines how musical and sonic practices shape understandings of people and places, and how they change as they move across cultural, institutional, and historical contexts. Her work addresses questions of cultural representation, pedagogy, materiality, and sustainability, as well as approaches to understanding and teaching Balinese music theory and musical analysis. Her book American Gamelan and the Ethnomusicological Imagination examines the history of Balinese gamelan in the United States as a site of cultural encounter and knowledge-making; she is also co-author, with Henry Spiller, of Focus: Gamelan Music of Indonesia. Her current research on the ecological, social, and musical life of the Balinese suling (bamboo flute) brings together questions of musical practice, environmental relationships, craft, and cultural heritage.
Her interdisciplinary work extends across museums, media, and cultural and environmental sustainability. In “Object Lessons: Teaching Musicology through Museum Collections,” she examines how musical instruments and material collections can transform the teaching and study of music. Her work on sound and media considers how music and sonic practices shape the representation of people, places, and imagined worlds in film and television, while her documentary Guna Pering (The Use of Bamboo), co-produced with I Gde Made Indra Sadguna, explores the ecological and cultural dimensions of bamboo instrument making in Bali. The project was supported by a 2024 AIFIS-Luce Documentary Filmmaker Grant. Across these projects, she explores the relationships among musical practice, material culture, environment, and cultural transmission.
Clendinning is a performer, ensemble director, and public scholar. She founded and directs Wake Forest’s Balinese gamelan ensemble, Gamelan Giri Murti, and develops collaborative projects involving performance, museums, cultural heritage, and public humanities. Her interdisciplinary research has been recognized with Wake Forest University’s 2022 Award for Excellence in Research.
She is Associate Chair and Professor of Music and Program Director of Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies at Wake Forest University. She holds a PhD in Musicology and an MM in Ethnomusicology from Florida State University and an AB in Music from the University of Chicago.
