Graduate Studies Division
Phd candidate
Graduate
Anthropology Department
Music Center
Monica Ambalal was born and raised in Stockton and began her academic career at San Joaquin Delta College before continuing on to receive: a BA from the University of New Orleans, an MA in Musicology from CSU Long Beach, an MA in Ethnomusicology from UC Davis (and soon a Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz). As an academic, she researches musics that center on transnationalism and hybridity with an emphasis in popular music from 1950-1965. She has explored: the sampling of Indian and Arab musics, the rise of the mambo in 1950s NYC, and kitsch/exotica genres. As a musician, she is a cellist of 25 years, a mezzo-soprano, and an amateur accordion player. She has worked in the CA community college system teaching music history, world music, and introductory theory and piano since 2006, and received tenure in 2019. In her current role at Merritt College, she serves as the chair of music and the Distance Education Coordinator for the campus.
Accordion, cello, Italian studies. Languages: French, Italian.
Here is the abstract of what I do: My dissertation concerns the development of the piano accordion in the Bay Area, Northern California, and the greater West Coast. Unique to the Bay Area is the fact that the piano accordion was further developed and continuously sustained by networks of Italian immigrant communities since the 1880s. The instrument was rebirthed in San Francisco as Italian communities to California developed new kinships through shared experiences of their voyage across the Atlantic, their loss of homeland, and their reliance on trusting family and those within their immediate community. In the early 1900s, the piano accordion became the leading instrument in Vaudeville, and it was used for festivals and parties as a portable, low-cost option. During the 1940s and 50s, accordion orchestras and studios existed into the hundreds throughout California, and annual student competitions were held in Oakland and San Jose well into the 1960s until the decline of the instrument when rock and blues became the desired new sound. Currently, piano-accordion music is sustained through third and fourth generations of Italians who recognize the instrument as connected to deep ancestral ties. Similarly, local diasporic communities recognize the piano accordion as a way to evoke nostalgia and memory, creating a shared and lived experience that unfolds as a California story.
"The Development and Sustainability of the Piano-Accordion by Italian Communities in Northern Ca." (Spring 2024, AMS Nor Cal, Reno, NV.)
“Sing, Draw, and Dance Your Final Exam: Using the Performing Arts in the Online Classroom.” (Summer 2023, Online Teaching Conference - Long Beach, CA.)
SEM Speed Mentoring Session (Fall, 2022 joint conference of AMS/SEM/SMT - New Orleans)'
“Forgotten Accordion Histories of Northern California.” (Fall 2022, Italian-American Studies Association - Pittsburgh, PA.)
“Lessons from Community College Professors.” Panel organizer (AMS, November 2021 - online)
“Beyond Objectivity: Embracing Activism in Scholarship and Teaching.” Panel participant (AMS, November 2021 - online).
“Requiem Remix: Mozart’s Ghost in Sampling, Hip-hop, and Pop Culture.” (Canceled, IASPM Benelux – October 2021).
“Manlio Silva and the History of the Stockton Symphony.” (Spring 2020, Northern California Chapter of the AMS at Pacific).
“Stockton’s Little Symphony: Music Emerging in the Presence of Turmoil, and Unsurity in the Central Valley, CA.” (March 2017, Stockton Philomathean Club).
“Natural Woman: The Influence of Black Female Vocalists in 1950s Popular Music.” (March 2015, San Joaquin Delta College).
“The History and Structure of Khmer Instruments: with a Focus on Cambodian Psychedelia.” (November 2014, Khmer Student Coalition Conference at Pacific).
“African-American Work Songs and the Convict Lease System.” (February 2014, San Joaquin Delta College at the Tillie Lewis Theatre).
“Stan Freeman: The Use of Harpsichord at Columbia Records under the Direction of Mitch Miller.” (March 2012, The Historical Keyboard Society in Cincinnati CCM).
“From the South Bronx to Baghdad: Identity and Belonging in Hip Hop’s Middle Eastern Counter-Narrative.” (November 2010, American Studies Association meeting in San Antonio).
“Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room: Post-war Escape and Soundscape.” (April 2009, ECHO: Music and Humor at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music).
“The 1950s Mambo Craze: When Canasta was Replaced by Mambo Lessons.” (November 2006, Society of Ethnomusicology in Hawaii).
Exhibit Review: “The Italian Culture Display at Fresno Big County Fair.” Italian-American Review, John D. Calandra Italian-American Institute. Published by University of Illinois Press. Fall, 2023.
Book Review: The Journal of Jazz Studies: Rutgers University. The Inconvenient Lonnie Johnson: Blues, Race, Identity. By Julia Simon. University Park: PA., Pennsylvania University Press. Fall, 2022.
“Hearing St. Peter’s in the Kitchen: The Vatican Media Livestream of Holy Week 2020 During COVID-19.” Musicking through COVID-19: Challenges, Adaptations, and New Practices. The Journal of Music, Health, and Well-being. Spring, 2021.
“Guido Deiro and Pietro Diero.” The Oxford Dictionary of American Music (Grove Online). Spring, 2021.
Book review: The Long 60s by Sarah Hill. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Society of American Music Newsletter. Spring, 2020.
The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed. “Les Baxter, Eddie Cantor, Martin Denny, Connie Francis, Dean Martin, Louie Prima.” New York: Oxford, 2013.
The Development and Commercialization of Afro-Cuban Mambo in Postwar American Popular Culture. M.A. thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2006.
