About the Contributors
- About the Contributors
Elise Anderson is pursuing dual PhD degrees in Folklore & Ethnomusicology and Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. Her research focuses on Uyghur music and culture in Xinjiang, drawing from the methods of historical ethnomusicology to explore contemporary music as a means of conceptualizing the past. She has performed ethnographic fieldwork in Xinjiang in the summers of 2007, 2010, and 2011, and is also active as a translator, having recently taken part in a project translating dastans (epic poems) from Uyghur into English with scholars at Xinjiang University in Urumqi, China.
Shalini Ayyagari is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at American University. Her research focuses on regional music practices in western Rajasthan, India; South Asian American popular music; and Bollywood film music. She received her PhD in 2009 from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently working on a book-length ethnography of musical practices happening in western Rajasthan at the intersections of institutional development, cultural tourism, and community activism.
Gavin Douglas is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His musical research interests include aesthetics, nationalism, politics, and globalization. Douglas’s primary research area is in Burma/Myanmar where he has studied state-supported music projects and the effects they have had on musicians. His most recent work focuses on the ethnic minorities of the highlands. His book Music in Mainland Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2009) explores cultural diversity, political trauma, and globalization across Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Michael Frishkopf is an Associate Professor of Music and Associate Director of the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta (Canada). He specializes in Islamic ritual, the Arab world, and West Africa. An edited collection, Music and Media in the Arab World, has recently been published by AUC Press. Action research in Ghana has recently produced two annotated CDs (kinkadrum.org and bit.ly/buducd). Frishkopf is a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Ethnomusicology, Associate Editor of the Review of Middle East Studies, and founder of the Society for Arab Music Research. [End Page 156]
Joseph Getter is an adjunct faculty member at Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven, teaching woodwinds, ethnomusicology, and Western and world music courses. He is completing his doctoral dissertation on Tamil film music at Wesleyan University, where he is Director of the Youth Gamelan program. His book chapter, “Tamil Film Music: Sound and Significance,” coauthored with B. Balasubrahmaniyan, was included in Global Soundtracks: Worlds of Film Music (Wesleyan University Press, 2008).
Ben Krakauer is a doctoral student and assistant instructor at the University of Texas at Austin. His research on Bengali Bauls connects to themes concerning the ethics of cultural tourism, and how the influx of cosmopolitan patrons affects local communities and artists. He has taught banjo at the University of Virginia and Tufts University, and has performed for over 20 professional recordings, including productions by Acoustic Disc, CMH Records, and the Fiddle Masters DVD series.
Ann E. Lucas is currently on the Music Faculty at Brandeis University, where she is an ACLS New Faculty Fellow. She is the founder of the Historical Ethnomusicology Special Interest Group within the Society for Ethnomusicology, and is on the board of the Manoochehr Sadeghi Foundation for Persian Classical Music. Lucas completed her PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010 with the dissertation “Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions.”
Peter Manuel has researched and published extensively on music of India, the Caribbean, Spain, and elsewhere. His recent publications include the edited volume Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean and the video Tassa Thunder: Folk Music from India to the Caribbean. He teaches ethnomusicology at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Ralph Samuelson is the former Director of the Asian Cultural Council (ACC), a foundation supporting cultural exchange in the arts between the United States and Asia, and he continues to serve the ACC as Senior Advisor. He is also a teacher and performer of the Japanese bamboo flute, shakuhachi. Samuelson completed an MA and pursued PhD studies in Ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University and...
