About the Contributors
- About the Contributors
Susan M. Asai is an associate professor in the Department of Music at Northeastern University in Boston. As an ethnomusicologist, her primary areas of research and writing are traditional Japanese folk performing arts and issues of music and identity in the work of Asian American musician–composers. African American music is a secondary research area and her current work explores the influence of African American politics and culture on the development of Asian American improvisational music.
Tolga Bektaş is an oud player and composer of classical Turkish music, which he has been studying since 1994 with the Ankara Classical Turkish Music Ensemble of Gazi University. He has also worked with the master musician Cinuçen Tanrıkorur. At present, he is a co-teacher of the Ankara ensemble, while researching and writing articles on classical Turkish music. He works as an instructor at Baskent University and is a Ph.D. student in industrial engineering at Bilkent University in Ankara.
Greg Booth received his Ph.D. in music from Kent State University in 1986 and was appointed to his current position in ethnomusicology at the University of Auckland in 1993. He has been conducting research on music and culture in South Asia since 1981 and performs Hindustani classical music on tabla as a student of Ustad Zakir Hussain. Dr. Booth has published research on the guru-shishya parampara, brass and wedding bands, popular music, and Hindi films and film music. He is currently engaged in field work in Mumbai on film music and musicians. His monograph on South Asian brass bands is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Veit Erlmann teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently preparing for a research project on the anthropology of listening in West Sumatra.
Thomas M. Hunter works in the field of study abroad in India and Indonesia. At present he is the resident director of the Study Indonesia Program of the Australian Consortium of Universities. He began his studies of Hindustani [End Page 139] music under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in 1970, and was thus inspired to concentrate his academic studies and research on the comparative study of the linguistics and literature of Sanskrit, Old Javanese, Balinese, and Malay-Indonesian.
Henry Johnson is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he teaches and undertakes research in ethnomusicology, Asian studies, and performing arts studies. He lectures and performs on a number of Asian instruments, including the Japanese koto and shamisen, gamelan from Java and Bali, and Indian sitar. His book, The Koto: A Traditional Instrument in Contemporary Japan, was published in 2004 by Hotei Publishing.
Amelia Maciszewski is an ethnomusicologist, sitarist, and Hindustani music educator. She received the M.Mus. degree in sitar performance from Viswa-Bharati University in Santiniketan, India, and the Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin. She has taught at the University of Alberta and the University of Pittsburgh. She has published several journal articles, produced two ethnographic films on women musicians in India, and is an active performer of Hindustani music.
Anne Prescott is an outreach coordinator at the East Asian Studies Center and also teaches Japanese music in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University in Bloomington. She received her Ph.D. from Kent State University with a dissertation on the life and works of koto composer Miyagi Michio. She spent eight years in Japan, where she studied koto and shamisen at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and performed with a number of koto groups in Tokyo. She is currently working to increase interest in and knowledge of East Asian music in American schools.
I Nyoman Sedana is a faculty member and chairman of the Pedalangan Theatre Department at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI), Denpasar. He received his Ph.D. in drama and theatre at the University of Georgia and has taught Balinese dance, gamelan, and theatre at several institutions in the United States. He also teaches at Indonesian Hindu University, Denpasar. He has received an ASIA Fellows Award 2004–2005 from the Asian Scholarship Foundation to under take research on puppet theatre in India.
Michael...
