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Making music in Madagascar
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February 25, 2009 | 03:17 PM
Talk about your well-rounded, well-traveled and high-achieving young adult — Meaghan Folk-Freund of Setauket, a journalism student at Stony Brook University with a dual major in anthropology — and a former intern at TBR newspapers — served with the SBU anthropology department's Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments in Ranomafana National Park Research Station, Madagascar, from September to December of 2008.
At the Centre ValBio, International Training Center for the Study of Biodiversity, the types of research programs vary widely. Most of the research involves contributions to the understanding of tropical rain forests throughout the world and providing information on the endangered biodiversity of Madagascar. Specific projects include plant and animal studies of important and at-risk species, and community-level studies. It was at the community level that Meaghan, 22, found her focus.
One of the many requirements of the three-month undergraduate program is to research and gather information attained while living and working in a tented research community.
A small village, Tana, was down a mountain dirt road with a satellite connection to home and the Internet. When it came time to do her independent study, Folk-Freund, a 2004 Ward Melville alumnus, made the trip down the mountain to make a satellite phone call to home.
"Ma, there is so much I could write about," she said to her mother. After relating her wonderful experiences, and the important experiments they were doing, she asked, "What do you think I should do it on?"
Lynda Folk of East Setauket, owner of Little Folk's Music, thought about this for a while, then said, "Do it on something you know about. Aren't you doing cultural anthropology? See if they know the melody of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; after all my friend from Egypt knows it, and that's one of their methods to teach beginning music."
Two weeks later Meaghan's mother got another call. "Guess what?" Meaghan said. "They didn't know the song, but it was so inviting to the whole village, they all came out to help me with my project. They showed me their music, they sang and played their instruments that were made from the rain forest. It was so much fun. Now I know why you love doing what you do."
Lynda Folk is so proud, so puffed up of her daughter's accomplishments, she said she couldn't see straight.
Meaghan Folk-Freund returned home on December 2 and graduated with a multidisciplinary degree from Stony Brook University on Dec. 22.
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