Getting to know... Margaret Kartomi
Professor Margaret Kartomi
Name: Margaret Joy Kartomi
Title: Professor
Faculty: Arts
Department: School of Music-Conservatorium
Campus: Clayton
How long have you worked at Monash?
For 43 years, ever since I took up an Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Fellowship in the then Department of Music to research Aboriginal children’s music at Yalata, South Australia, in 1969-1970.
Where did you work prior to starting at the University?
I was a Tutor in Keyboard Harmony at the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide in 1963.
What do you like best about your role?
The ethnomusicological research process, beginning with field work (recording/videoing music, dance and theatre performances and interviewing artists) in Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai and Filipino villages; archiving, researching and publishing on the performing arts in their social context; and supervising student research.
Why did you choose your current career path?
My best subjects at school were Music, English and Geography and I studied Indonesian privately on meeting Indonesian students in Adelaide from the age of ten, so an ethnomusicological career in Southeast Asian music-cultures seemed a natural path to follow.
First job?
Serving nut sundaes, spiders etc at the Café of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Adelaide.
Worst job?
Working as a telephonist assistant in the telegrams section of the Adelaide GPO at two-thirds of a male wage for exactly the same job in 1959.
What research are you currently working on and what does it involve?
I’m correcting the proofs of my book Musical Journeys in Sumatra for the University of Illinois Press, and continuing my fieldwork in Sumatra’s Aceh, Lampung and Riau Islands provinces with several colleagues, to complete my life work on Sumatra.
What is your favourite place in the world and why?
The Sumatran highland ranges, where the people are so hospitable despite their poverty, the legends and performing arts are so diverse and exquisite, the views are magnificent, and the durian and other fruits are the most delicious.
What is your favourite place to eat and why?
The Flower Drum restaurant in Melbourne, where the tahu/tofu dishes are exquisitely cooked.
What is the best piece of advice you have received?
Who is the happiest person? S/he who values the merits of others,
And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though they were her/his own (The Poems of Goethe, 1853, my translation).
Tell us something about yourself that your colleagues wouldn’t know?
I accompanied Paul Robeson on the piano at concert and trade union meetings during his visit to Adelaide in 1960.