Sean Williams (ethnomusicologist)
Sean Williams (born 1959, Berkeley, California) is an ethnomusicologist who teaches at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her primary areas of teaching include music, Irish studies, and Asian studies; she leads the Sundanese music ensembles Gamelan Degung Girijaya (Enduring Mountain Gamelan) and Angklung Buncis Sukahejo. She received a BA in classical guitar performance from UC Berkeley in 1981, and an MA (1985) and Ph.D. (1990) in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington (Seattle). Books. Williams has written numerous articles about music in Indonesia, Ireland, and Japan, and written or edited several books about music, food , and grammar: She has served as 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 academic 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 and Brazilian 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 adult music camps.