Daniel Piper Awarded Fellowship for 2009-2010

Ethnomusicology student Daniel Piper was awarded a Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies a Craig M. Cogut Dissertation Fellowship in Latin American and Caribbean Studies for the 2009-2010 academic year.

Daniel's graduate work has concentrated on music of Afro-descendent populations, and thus far his research has brought him to the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Cuba, and Boston. His dissertation treats a significant understudied subject from a unique perspective - Dominican palos and salves music within expressions of popular religion, including fiestas de santo, Las 21 Divisiones (Dominican Vodú), pilgramages, processionals, and funeral rites. Daniel's project is based on extended ethnographic field research and emphasizes mobility (or musical travelers), religious and musical networks, performance interaction, and modernization of traditional Afro-Dominican music.