PROFILE : Making Sure Non-Western Music Is Not a World Away : When it comes to ethnomusicology, Barbara Barnard Smith has the answers.

The Indonesian music concert ends and the conductor asks for questions from the audience. Out of left field comes an inquiry on esoteric Indonesian instruments that neither the conductor, the performers nor the composer can answer.

In desperation, the conductor turns to an audience member, a dignified white-haired woman.

No problem. “I threw it over to Barbara and she explained it,” said Boris Brott, conductor of the Ventura County Symphony.

When it comes to ethnomusicology, Barbara Barnard Smith not only has the answers, she also has the money. Descendant of a pioneer county family, Smith, 73, is an internationally prominent expert on non-Western music and a patron of the arts.

A year ago, she put up $500,000 to finance the Barbara Barnard Smith Fund for World Musics. This came on the heels of a $100,000 endowment she and her sister, Helen M. Smith, established at the county Museum of History and Art to perpetuate an exhibit housed in the Fred W. and Grace Hobson Smith Gallery, named for their parents.

In setting up the music fund, Smith hopes to expose county residents to non-Western musical traditions. The Ventura County Symphony was given $20,000 from the fund this year for a “Musics Alive!” series--three concerts combining modern music with music from Indonesia, China and India.

Smith, who grew up on a ranch in Ojai, came from a musical family--her mother was an accomplished violinist; but their music was traditional Western, not the music of Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Non-Western music was foreign to her until 1949. After graduating from the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N. Y., Smith was hired to teach Western music at the University of Hawaii on Oahu. But when she looked around the classroom, she saw multicultural students who weren’t connecting with her.

“I realized they came from various backgrounds and should have music from their own culture,” Smith said.

Immersing herself in non-Western music, she found a wealth of musical traditions and started an ethnomusicology studies program at the university, “developing it almost out of thin air,” said Amy Stillman, a former student of Smith’s and now a music professor at UC Santa Barbara.

Smith traveled extensively in Micronesia and Japan, discovering exotic songs, dances and instruments. Studying the koto--a zither-like instrument--with the foremost player in Japan, she became proficient enough to give public performances in that country.

Her scholarly reputation in Japan gave her access to Japanese temples; once, she was given the honor of being invited to play the largest drum during a religious ceremony.

Smith’s teaching brought the University of Hawaii to international prominence in ethnomusicology. She trained graduate students who went on “to fairly illustrious careers in their field,” Stillman said. “And it was all because of her.”

Reticent and reserved away from the classroom, Smith was a demanding professor “who had a fierce reputation as the Dragon Lady,” Stillman said. “She held her graduate students to professional standards. She had this awesome red pencil. You’d hand in a paper and it would come back with more red ink on it than your ink.”

Smith fesses up to the Dragon Lady reputation. “I tried to make sure my students learned to communicate as clearly as possible,” she said. “They’d always be shocked when I told them I would be reading their papers with ‘the intent of misunderstanding.’

“Some thought I was unbearably strict. But my idea was for them to appreciate me two years afterward. That’s what I aimed for. “I tended to be something of a perfectionist.”

Smith apparently was the Dragon Lady with the heart of gold. “She became my favorite teacher,” Stillman said. “She went beyond what was normally expected.”

Smith, who retired in 1982, lives on Oahu--”I never really expected to spend the rest of my life there,” she said--but makes frequent visits to Ventura to tend to family business (the Smith-Hobson family still has oil, farming and real estate interests in the county). Her support for the arts here stems from “a certain kind of obligation to Ventura County and its peoples,” she said.

Smith’s visits also coincide with “Musics Alive!” concerts. She was responsible, along with Brott, for creating the concept. Three years ago, while Brott was attending a seminar on Maui, he had lunch with Smith at the suggestion of her nephew, Greg Smith, past board president of the symphony. From that lunch, the concerts evolved.

Smith has never been married. “You could say I married my work,” she said. “I would not have been able to devote as much time and been able to travel as much as I did if I would have been involved in bringing up children. As it was, I enjoyed everything.”