July 28, 2006

'The Ethnomusicologists' Cookbook'

By NINA C. AYOUB

When Sean Williams, an ethnomusicologist, was doing fieldwork in Indonesia, she found the food as intriguing as the music. The scholar, now a professor at Evergreen State College, got used to a breakfast of fried rice with a spicy red sambal sauce, even if she at times longed for cornflakes. Among the Sundanese of west Java, she says, "the more searingly spicy food a foreigner can handle, the more approval (and uproarious teasing) one wins." The scholar describes how they prize the