A donation of $3.5 million to the University of Hawaii Music Department by the Barbara Barnard Smith Foundation is the largest ever to that department and will fund its first-ever endowed chair.

“The newly established Professor Barbara Barnard Smith Endowed Chair supports the university’s desire and commitment to revitalize its ethnomusicology program and honors the legacy of the late revered UH Manoa professor who died in 2021,” a UH news release said.

The ethnomusicology program at UH Manoa educates students in music from around the world, with a special focus on Asia and the Pacific.

The gift also supports two additional faculty positions, plus several enhancements to the ethnomusicology program, including student support.

“The Barbara Barnard Smith Foundation grant is a truly transformative one,” UH Manoa Provost Michael Bruno said in the release. “It will build on the amazing legacy of Professor Smith and the internationally recognized ethnomusicology program she pioneered, as well as secure UH Manoa’s future significance in the field. I am deeply grateful for this grant and the profound impact it will have on students, faculty, performance and scholarship.”

Smith is widely considered a trailblazer in the ethnomusicology field. Hired initially to teach piano and music theory when she began working at UH Manoa in 1949, “she became interested in the diversity of her students’ backgrounds, and soon began to question why Western music was taught exclusively,” the release said. “She set out on a path to educate herself in numerous musical traditions of Hawaii, the Pacific and Asia that would eventually lead to the founding and development of one of the nation’s earliest programs in ethnomusicology, which is internationally recognized today.”

Her earliest students include legendary Hawaii musicians Herb Ohta and Eddie Kamae.

Smith officially retired in 1982 but remained involved with the UH Music Department and continued to mentor students for another three decades, into her 90s, the release said. “Graduates of the program Smith founded continue to hold influential positions throughout Hawaii, the greater U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia and the Pacific region,” the release said.