About the Contributors
- About the Contributors
Stephen Blum teaches ethnomusicology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His recent publications include essays in Theorizing the Local: Music, Practice, and Experience in South Asia and Beyond, ed. R. Wolf (2009), Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society, ed. G. Solis and B. Nettl (2009), and Musical Conflict: Ethnomusicological Perspectives, ed. J. M. O’Connell and S. El-Shawan Castelo-Branco (2010).
Alexander M. Cannon is a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan and the first recipient of the Judith Becker Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Research on Southeast Asia (2010). He has conducted fieldwork research as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow in Vietnam (2008–2009) where he studied the performance and pedagogical practices of three charismatic musicians of traditional music in Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta.
Lee-Suan Chong is a researcher and ethnomusicology lecturer in the School of Arts, University Malaysia Sabah. She holds an MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Hawai‘i. Her research interests focus on the relationship between mental aspects of human and musical sounds, musical effects on audience and performers, wisdom of Tibetan Buddhist music, and musical tradition of Sabah ethnic music. She has been active in Sabah ethnic music research; has lived in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India, Nepal, San Francisco, and Hawai‘i while researching; and is also a Buddhist practitioner.
Bruno Deschênes is a composer, musician, ethnomusicologist, and a specialist in Japanese music, performing the shakuhachi. Additionally he is a journalist of World Music. His current research project concerns Western musicians who learn and teach non- Western music to Westerners.
Stefan Fiol received his PhD from the University of Illinois (2008) after conducting two years of ethnographic research on vernacular and mass-mediated music in Uttarakhand, North India. He has carried out fieldwork projects and maintains research interests in the music of Paraguay, Chile, and Zimbabwe. He was the recipient of the Fulbright- Hays and Wenner-Gren dissertation research grants (2004–2005) and the American Institute of Indian Studies junior fellowship (2006–2007). Dr. Fiol has taught at the University of Illinois at [End Page 156] Urbana-Champaign (2002–2004), the University of Notre Dame (2005–2006), and the Eastman School of Music (2008–2010) in Rochester, New York. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati.
Jesse A. Johnston currently teaches at Bowling Green State University. He completed a PhD degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan in 2008 with a dissertation that focused on the history and performance of the cimbalom in the region of Moravia in the Czech Republic. His research interests include musical instruments, Javanese gamelan, and brass bands in the Philippines.
Tse-Hsiung Lin is a full-time lecturer associated with Chien Kuo University in Taiwan. His main academic interest is the relationship between social realities and the role or function of music within the contexts of Chinese societies across the world. At the present time, Lin is completing his PhD in music at the University of California–San Diego, in addition to a postgraduate degree in Buddhism at Foguang University in Taiwan.
Christopher J. Miller is a lecturer at Cornell University, teaching a course on Indonesian music and directing the Javanese gamelan ensemble. Miller is also a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University, completing a dissertation on contemporary art music composition in Indonesia. As well as a scholar, he is active as a performer of traditional Javanese gamelan. As a composer he has written numerous pieces for gamelan and collaborated with Indonesian composers.
Kristina Nelson, an ethnomusicologist and Arabist, received her PhD from the University of California–Berkeley. She is the author of The Art of Reciting the Qur’an (University of Texas Press, 1986, and American University in Cairo Press, 2001). Dr. Nelson has taught at UC-Berkeley, UT-Austin, and the University of Khartoum. Additionally she was a Senior Research Fellow in the Arabic Lexicography Project that produced A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic (ed. M. Hinds and B. El- Said. Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1986) and has lectured internationally. She has lived and worked in the Middle East since 1983...
