Sean Williams (ethnomusicologist)


Sean Williams is an ethnomusicologist who teaches at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
Her primary areas of teaching include Irish studies and Asian studies; she leads the Sundanese music ensembles Gamelan Degung Girijaya and Angklung Buncis Sukahejo. She received a BA in classical guitar performance from UC Berkeley in 1981, and an MA and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington.

Publications

Sean has written numerous articles about music in Indonesia, Ireland, and Japan, and written or edited several books:
Her book Bright Star of the West won the Alan P. Merriam Prize for Outstanding Book in Ethnomusicology in 2012. She has been a council and board member of the Society for Ethnomusicology, in which she served as Second Vice President, is a participant in the Special Interest Group on Celtic Music, and was formerly on the board of the Society for Asian Music; she belongs to several other music-and-culture-related societies. As part of the Irish Cultural Society of the Pacific Northwest, she helps to host the Sean-nós Northwest Festival in Olympia, Washington every spring. She has a Facebook profile called Captain Grammar Pants, in which she posts tips on grammar, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and etymology.
Sean Williams is also a musician; she plays numerous Indonesian instruments along with the classical guitar, Irish fiddle, and banjo. She sings in Irish, English, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Sundanese. In the summers she sometimes teaches at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop in Port Orchard, Washington.