Even in his downtime, David Henderson can’t escape music.  Drawn to music since he was a child and now co-chair of the music department at St. Lawrence, Henderson is faced with a dilemma. “What do I do when I want to take a break from work?” he says.  “I can’t listen to music.”

Fortunately, he’s got other passions in life.  “Hiking always helps put me in the right place,” Henderson points out.  “And lately I’ve taken to watching the Trailer Park Boys.”  When he was younger, he competed in chess tournaments as well.

Since he arrived at St. Lawrence in 2001, Henderson has worked hard to help restructure the core of the music curriculum, and the department now offers a wider, more diverse selection of courses.  “We have many students who drop in for one semester and never take another class in music,” he says.  “We work just as hard for them, opening up ways of thinking about music, talking about it, listening to it, or making it.”

Henderson likens a full-time faculty position to “having a bunch of part-time jobs stuck together.”  He explains, “In one morning, I might draft a schedule of classes for an upcoming semester, teach a Bon Jovi music video, help a student with a troublesome research topic, look at carpet samples for a space in the Noble Center, and smooth out a translation of a Nepali song.”

Nepal has been at the heart of Henderson’s writing and research since 1987.  Much of his work revolves around popular Nepali music, and every few years he has the opportunity to travel to the capital city of Kathmandu.

Henderson completed his undergraduate study at Pomona College and his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin.  He previously worked at the University of Oklahoma, an institution of nearly 30,000 students.  Seeking a change of scenery, he applied for a job at St. Lawrence.  “I really liked the department,” he says.  “It was small, and the people in it seemed not only to get along, but also to like each other.  Those things haven’t changed, even though the department has.”