UL Students Uncover Patterns of Cultural Diffusion through Music

By Head of Community Engagement Gordon Mathis

In Upper Learning, students learn more than the lessons from the textbook as they listen to spirited music performances by Galloway faculty members. Did you know that musical instruments also traveled along the Silk Road? The sophomores in AP World History do, thanks to a lesson from Galloway’s Integrated Learning Specialist Peggy Benkeser. 

A musicologist and percussionist by education, Ms. Benkeser taught the students about a Persian instrument called the santur. When carried by merchants along the Silk Road, the instrument eventually evolved into the Chinese yangqin; when carried by traders into Europe, it evolved into the hammered dulcimer in Appalachia. She performed on a santur for the students, evoking an auditory impression of west Asian sounds in the Galloway classroom.

Did you also know that the idea of the banjo was carried in the minds of people forced into the trans-Atlantic slave trade? The American banjo had its origins in the west African nation of Gambia. Enslaved peoples carried the concept of the instrument to North America, where they attached strings to gourds to approximate the instrument from their heritage, which eventually developed into the modern banjo. 

Framing these lessons with an introduction to cultural appropriation, Ms. Benkeser differentiated among cultural diffusion, cultural appropriation, and cultural appreciation - all important distinctions for students to learn. As a result of Ms. Benkeser’s presentation, one student commented, “I had learned that weapons and spices moved along the Silk Road, but I never knew that the Silk Road was responsible for musical instruments as well.” 

Ms. Benkeser was trained in the pedagogy of World Music, specifically ethnomusicology, at the University of Washington, and has published lessons through the Smithsonian Folkways program associated with the Smithsonian Institute.