Editor’s Note: “Professors’ picks” is a bi-weekly column that explores the presence of music in PLNU professors’ lives. The goal is to celebrate music as a universal language and spotlight how music inspires campus figures in their respective fields.
As I made my way through a hallway in Sator Hall to find the office of the laboratory manager and instructor Jorji Siegmundt, I could hear the building’s many sounds.
There were bellowing echoes of liquid nitrogen tanks releasing pressure through its valves, the quiet beeps of analytical scales and the booming flow of air as the ventilation system worked through the chemical fume hoods. One sound that persisted among them all, though, was that of music emanating from Siegmundt’s office as she was working on keeping the chemistry laboratory orderly and regulated.
This influence of music appeared early in her life, introduced to her by her father.
“My earliest memory is sitting in the back of dad’s car, and just singing along with the radio, listening to America’s top 40 or whatever was on,” Siegmundt said. “There were a couple of songs that he really liked that I remember, especially introducing me to Blondie.”
Blondie, a popular rock band led by American singer Debbie Harry, was instrumental in the upbringing of those in the late 1970s, but also in Siegmundt’s childhood.
A feminist icon of the time, Blondie bridged the realm of femininity and gritty punk to create a band that captivated millions. “One Way or Another” and “Heart of Glass” are two of the many songs in her discography that took America by storm. Siegmundt was entranced by her confident style.
“She was my first real interest, I remember,” she said. “There’s something about her, and maybe it’s just because she didn’t really make a whole lot of music after the album with ‘Heart of Glass’ on it [‘Parallel Lines’]. It just instantly takes me back to that time.”
Aside from listening to music on car radios, Siegmundt made an effort to attend concerts in her local community in Wisconsin. Preferring the small, more intimate venues that artists played at, she attended as many concerts as she could with close friends.
“I was very into punk music and ska,” she said. “I had a lot of friends who were into that, and we would always go to local concerts.”
Ska music, specifically, intertwines punk energy with the roots of Jamaican ska from the late 1950s. Characterized by upbeat instrumentation, catchy melodies and strong emphasis on offbeat, ska was a genre largely dominated by bands like No Doubt in the late 1960s. Attending multiple of their concerts, No Doubt was one of the standout bands for her.
Ska, punk, rock — you name the genre, Siegmundt was there in the seas of people at these smaller-scale concerts. In one pivotal moment, she was an arm’s length away from Mike Shinoda, one of the vocalists for rock band Linkin Park, while backstage at a Deftones concert.
“This was right when they were getting started, and they were not very big at the time,” she said.
Completely starstruck, Siegmundt said she was terrified to talk to Shinoda.
“I kept looking at him, and he’d look at me, and I’d look at him,” she said. “These days I might say ‘Hey,’ and that might be about it, but I was too scared.”
Concerts are not a thing of the past for Siegmundt, where she was able to attend Blink-182’s “One More Time Tour” at Petco Park in 2024.
“It was such a good concert,” she said. “They put on such a show, I can’t even explain it. They have easily been the best concerts I have ever been to.”
Isa Darisay 
Kaelyn VanderSpek