Caroline Card Wendt

Dr. Caroline Card Wendt, PhD, died Thursday, March 2024, two weeks after her 96th birthday. Caroline was born in New York City on February 29, 1928, and grew up near Patterson, New Jersey. She started studying the piano at the age of three with her mother; she began the violin at five, taught by a violinist from the NBC Orchestra. While in high school she studied music theory at the Juilliard School. She later studied violin with William Kroll at the Mannes School of Music. She enrolled as a music major at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Frustrated with the rigidity of the music department in not letting her take a foreign language, she switched to French, receiving a bachelor’s degree. For several years she taught French and music in the Basking Ridge, New Jersey, school system. She became well known as a violinist in Northern New Jersey. She travelled for a season with an orchestra conducted by Boris Goldofsky, accompanying duo-pianists Luboshutz and Nemenoff. Later she was one of three “girl violinists” backing the night club act of former Metropolitan Opera tenor James Melton. In her 30s Caroline changed direction, moving into ethnomusicology, a field that combines musicology with anthropology in studying how people think of music. She enrolled in Hunter College, a part of the City University of New York. Ever fascinated by the far-away, Caroline chose to study the music of the nomadic Tuareg tribe in the Sahara, becoming the first American to do so. For her Master’s research she spent a summer in the oasis town of Tamanrasset, Algeria, learning about the imzad, a single-string bowed lute made by stretching goatskin across a half gourd. The instrument is played exclusively by women. After completing her master’s degree Caroline enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington. In the dining hall of the graduate dorm she met John Wendt, quickly forming a friendship that grew into marriage after she finished her fieldwork. That fieldwork took Caroline back to the Sahara, with support from a Fulbright-Hays fellowship. She spent six months in Tamanrasset renewing friendships with musicians, followed by six months in Niamey, the capitol of Niger, with a short break for library research in Paris and Berlin. This allowed her to document the changes in musical style between the nomadic Tuareg in Algeria and the increasingly sedentary Tuareg in Niger. After her return to the U.S. and marriage to John, Caroline commenced work on her doctoral dissertation. John’s work then took them to Indianapolis, where Caroline became active in the International Center of Indianapolis. She developed a series of exhibits featuring art by international artists living in Indianapolis. Some of these lead to shows at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (now Newfields) and in art galleries in the Broad Ripple neighborhood. She also became an adjunct professor at the University of Indianapolis, teaching courses in International Music. She organized a student trip to China, visiting such places as the Terra Cotta Army and the (no-longer) Forbidden City. Caroline and John eventually settled in Noblesville, Indiana, half-way between John’s work in Kokomo and Caroline’s teaching at the University. Caroline began teaching private students in violin and piano; many became life-long friends. She became active in the Noblesville Cultural Arts Commission. Dissatisfied with the dominant Suzuki violin teaching method, Caroline developed her own teaching method, writing a series of books forming The Singing Violin. The motto of the series is “If you can sing it, you can play it!” Many teachers were enthusiastic, but the series never took off commercially. At the University of Indianapolis Caroline took up art, creating many paintings based on photos from her travels. Ever the traveler, Caroline took John to places like the Grand Canyon; the Galapagos Islands; Paris; and Russia, as guests on a trip of their granddaughter’s high school choir. She also visited Cuba for a folk music conference, taking a few days for travel around the island. In 2010, the government of Algeria hosted Caroline in Tamanrasset (now a thriving city), where she participated in a convention led by the Society for the Preservation of the Imzad. The Society was created out of concern that an important part of Algerian culture was dying out. Several years after John retired, they moved to Westminster Village North. Caroline continued to teach, until failing vision made it impossible. Caroline was a 20-year member of the All-Souls Unitarian Church, where she was elected to a term on the Board of Trustees and was chair or a member of a number of committees. Caroline was preceded in death by two daughters, Connie Sennert and Sharon Rolzin. She is survived by her husband, John, their granddaughter, Kate Sennert, and her beloved Bombay cat, Raven. A life-long cat lover and a long-term Unitarian, Caroline requested that memorial contributions be made to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center in Centerpoint, Indiana, and to All Souls Unitarian Church of Indianapolis A memorial service will be held on Saturday, April 20, at 1 p.m., at Westminster Village North, 11050 Presbyterian Drive, Indianapolis IN 46236. Arrangements are handled by Crown Hill Funeral Home.