Alumni of the Columbia Ethnomusicology Program

Adriana Helbig (BA in German and Music with honors from Drew University in 1997; MA and MPhil in Ethnomusicology from Columbia) has completed and defended (May 2005) her dissertation, which analyzes the influences of international development aid on Roma music traditions in Ukraine. Her research interests include the relationship between music and politics, music and social movements, music and migration, and issues of race, class, and gender in Eastern European hip hop. She works with Roma non-government organizations in Ukraine, translates the largest Internet-based Roma newspaper in the CIS into English (www.romaniyag.uz.ua/en), and consults members of the Ukrainian government on national minority affairs. In 2006, she participated as a policy analyst in the Civil Society and Democracy in Ukraine project sponsored by the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington D.C. Her published works in English include an article titled “The Cyberpolitics of Music in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution” Current Musicology 82; a book chapter titled “Changing Discourses of Race and Place: NGOs, European Integration, and the Roma in Ukraine” In Civil Society and Democracy in Ukraine. Edited by Paul D’Anieri, Dominique Arel, and Blair Ruble. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, forth.); and a book review of The World of Mykola Lysenko: Ethnic Identity, Music, and Politics in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Ukraine. By Taras Filenko and Tamara Bulat. (Toronto: Ukraine Millennium Foundation Press, 2001). World of Music Vol. 48 (1): 100-102. Her article “Ukraine: Performing Politics” published in Transitions Online No. 156 (February 27, 2006) was reprinted in Italian, Hungarian, and Russian translation on various policy websites and list-services. A member of SEM and ICTM, she is also affiliated with the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University and will teach a course on post-socialist music traditions in the Spring of 2007. A classical pianist who received her training at the Vienna Conservatory, she has taught the Music Humanities course at Columbia University and presently teaches Music History at Fordham University. Her doctoral research in Ukraine was sponsored by a Fulbright U.S. Student grant.
Email: anh5@columbia.edu

Click here to download Adriana’s dissertation titled “Play for me, Old Gypsy: Music as Political Resource in the Roma Rights Movement in Ukraine”