Allyn Miner is a researcher on North Indian music specializing in Hindi, Urdu, and Sanskrit sources. She is also a performer on the sitar.

She studied sitar with Thakur Raj Bhan Singh in Varanasi and others between 1971 and 1982 and received a Ph.D. in Musicology from Banaras Hindu University under the guidance of Professor Prem Lata Sharma.

Back in the U.S. she became a disciple of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. She joined the faculty of the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and taught lecture and sitar performance courses there from 1984 until 2018. In 1992 she received a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from Penn for her study of a 14th-century musicological text from western India.

She has been guest faculty at the University of Washington, NYU, UCLA, and the National College of Arts Lahore, and was a member of a European Research Council project team headed by Katherine Butler Schofield studying music in early modern Awadh.

Her books are Sitar and Sarod in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Wlilhelmshaven and Delhi 1993,1997), The Sangitopanisatsaroddhara (IGNCA New Delhi, 1998.) and the Minqar-i Musiqar of Hazrat Inayat Khan (Omega Publications, 2016).

Max Katz is associate professor in the Department of Music at William & Mary where he teaches courses cross-listed in Anthropology, American Studies, Africana Studies, and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. His first book, Lineage of Loss (2017), draws on a decade of ethnographic and archival research and eight years of musical apprenticeship under the chief musician of a legendary but moribund lineage of Hindustani instrumentalists to propound a critical re-reading of modern North Indian music history.

Dard Neuman is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Santa Cruz, California (UCSC). His research interests concern the musical cultivation, transmission and performance of Hindustani music in twentieth century North India as well as the relationship between organized sound, affect and power. He has published articles for SEM and Asian Music. His book manuscript, Hindustani Music, Heterodoxy and Modern Traditions examines oral histories, family genealogies and musical performances (commercial and live recordings) to argue for socio-musical innovations that constitute a form of indigenous modernity. His current work includes an “intercultural and open source notation/transcription” project, which is an interdisciplinary collaboration with scholars in algorithmic composition and computational media to move a prototype notation system onto an accompanying software environment. At UCSC, he has served as department chair for the last five years, the Hasan and Khan endowed chair of Classical Indian Music since 2005, co-director of the Center of South Asian Studies at UCSC, and Senate Chair of the Committee on Planning and Budget.

Richard Widdess is Emeritus Professor of Musicology at SOAS University of London. His research focuses on the history and analysis of the music of South Asia, with particular reference to the dhrupad tradition of North Indian vocal music, and Newar music of the Kathmandu Valley. His publications include The rāgas of early Indian music (1995), Dhrupad: tradition and performance in Indian music (with Ritwik Sanyal, 2004), and Dāphā: sacred singing in a South Asian city (2013). His recent collaborative research addresses the study of music cognition and music analysis in relation to world music.

As a result of graduating from a Bachelor of Music program (Boston University 1963), but subsequently observing the liberal arts experience as a teacher (Brown University 1971-75), I am a believer in education that integrates study of the arts with study of many other subjects. Not surprising for an ethnomusicologist (MA 1967 and PhD from UCLA 1971)! The ethnomusicology program that I began here at UC Berkeley (from 1975-1976) sits comfortably in a department of music in a College of Letters and Science.

I enjoy pursuing multiple interests and seeing the big picture. I very much enjoy teaching, both undergraduates (majors and non-majors, for whom I have written three textbooks–Music in India: The Classical Traditions, Thinking Musically, and Music in Japan: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture) and graduate students. And I alternate periods when I pursue primarily professorial activities with periods when I add administrative work to the mix (Chair of the Department of Music 1983-88, Dean of Undergraduate Advising 1992-98, Chair of the Deans of the College of Letters and Science 1994-98, Chair of the Group in Asian Studies, since 1999, and Chair of the Department of Music 2005-2009).

My first research was in Japanese music (resulting in Tegotomono: 19th Century Koto Music, Greenwood-Praeger 1976) as a result of studying koto in Japan in 1963-64, but that was followed quickly by a focus on Hindustani music as a result of travel in South Asia in 1965. My book Khyal: Creativity Within North India’s Classical Vocal Tradition (Cambridge University Press,1984) was a study of that improvisatory genre as performed in this century by multiple groups (gharanas) of musicians. For the next 14 or so years I focused on historical time (the 16th-17th centuries) and on visual sources (miniature paintings that depict music-making to trace the development of North Indian classical music); Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India was published in 1998 (University of Chicago Press). I have since renewed my work in Japan, now focusing on contemporary Japanese musical culture, in a sense returning to where I started. A result of some of my recent research has been Music in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2005), a textbook for the Global Music Series.

Ever-mindful of the important connection between teaching and research, I was able to meld them together in Thinking Musically, Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford University Press, 2004) for the Global Music Series (GMS). The GMS is an innovative introduction to world music that focuses on how people make music meaningful and useful in their lives. It consists of two framing volumes (one of which is Thinking Musically) and 27 case study volumes on music in various countries, all focused on themes and designed for in-depth study of a particular musical culture, and each accompanied by a CD. I am the co-General Editor of this Global Music Series for Oxford University Press.

A much longer CV includes several pages of articles and 6 pages of talks I have given, not included here. A most recent paper pertinent to discussions today is “Traces in Indian Miniature Paintings of Socio-Cultural Connections Between the Mughal Court and the Persianate World,” California State University Fresno, November, 2018, that you might want to know about.

I am most proud of having established the Ethnomusicology program at UC Berkeley in 1975-1976, which has become an internationally major program, and have supervised more than several dozen PhD dissertations (noted on my CV, not included here). I might also point out that my book, Khyal, was the inaugural volume in the Cambridge University ethnomusicology series. One of the things I have not noted here but of which I am also proud is that I was awarded the Berkeley Citation for Distinguished Achievement upon retirement, It is the highest accolade the University can give (we do not give Honorary degrees) and is for service to the university, scholarly achievement, and distinguished teaching.

I served as President of the SEM and Vice President of the American Musicological Society, the only ethnomusicologist to hold that office, and I was twice nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award at UC Berkeley.

Naseeruddin Saami of the Delhi Gharana, son of Abdul Hamid Khan Saami, was born into a family of classical vocalists who have been practicing their art for more than 730 years. It is believed that Naseeruddin Saami’s ancestor Miyan Samath was trained by Hazrat Ameer Khusro himself, and the generations of singers that followed kept up the tradition and further honed it to a high level of intricacy and refinement. Naseeruddin started his training at the age of 10, his style of singing is called ‘Sudh Bani’. Naseeruddin has been guided by four mentors – the main one being his Ustad and uncle Munshi Raziuddin - and Ustad Sardar Khan and Piaray Khan. From 1958-62 he also trained with his grand uncle Sardar Khan in Lahore.

Naseeruddin is a strict follower in the style of his family tradition-keeping ‘sur’ as the most important component of his singing. His singing is peaceful and calm. Heartfelt renditions of the raga, manifesting the emotions, which are mentioned in the bandish, is one of the main aspects of khayal gaiki in which he excels.

Besides performing live, he has recorded audio and video performances with various companies including the Coke Studio in Pakistan, which has received more than 1.2 million viewers.

William Rees Hofmann is a current Doctoral Researcher and Kamran Djam Fellowship scholar at SOAS, as well as a multi-instrumentalist specialising in both the Indian Sarod and the Afghan Rubab. Representing the musical lineages of the Maihar Gharana as well as that of Ustad Nabi Gol of Kabul, he has been studying sarod for the past thirteen years under the tutelage of Satyam Rai in Gujarat, India, and has been a student of the eminent rubab player and ethnomusicologist Dr. John Baily since 2013. Hofmann earned a BA in Hindustani Vocal Music from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in Gujarat, and also holds an MMus degree from SOAS in Sarod and Rubab Performance. William has performed internationally both solo and with Jāmi Ensemble, including at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Panorama Punjab, Muzaffar Ali's Jahān-e-Khusrau, and the Edinburgh Fringe, among others, as well as run workshops on the classical music of Kabul. His doctoral research centres around the history of music and performance practices between the Sufi environments and the Sultanate courts of early modern South Asia, with a special focus on Sufi poetry and song in early Hindi. For his research, he has been the recipient of the British Institute of Persian Studies Research Grant (2017), the SOAS Ouseley Memorial Award (2017), and the A.H. Morton Scholarship for Doctoral Research in Classical Persian Studies (2019). He has also recently been granted a Senior Performing Arts Fellowship (2020) from the American Institute of Indian Studies to turn his doctoral research on early Sufi song text collections into a performance and lecture/demonstration along with Jāmi Ensemble.

Katherine Butler Schofield is a historian of music and listening in Mughal India and the paracolonial Indian Ocean, based at King’s College London. Working largely with Persian and Urdu sources c. 1570–1860, through stories about alluring courtesans, legendary maestros, and captivated patrons she writes on sovereignty and selfhood, affection and desire, sympathy and loss, and power, worldly and strange. Katherine is the co-editor of two volumes of essays: Monsoon Feelings; A History of Emotions in the Rain, with Imke Rajamani and Margrit Pernau (Niyogi, 2018); and Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India (Open Book, 2015), with Francesca Orsini. Her latest book, Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India: Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858, will be out with Cambridge University Press in 2022. Katherine is a keen podcaster, and you can listen to her Histories of the Ephemeral series on iTunes, Soundcloud, and GooglePlay.

Ayesha is a doctoral candidate at the Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the music and performance practices of South Asia. Her dissertation, framed as a political history of music, studies the developing musicological milieu of North India, c.1428-1605 CE, against the backdrop of a contested political landscape. She draws on a diverse archive - literature, music texts, histories, dictionaries, religious (Sufi and Bhakti) literature, music paintings - in both Sanskrit and Persian. Before arriving at Penn, Ayesha received her Masters in Music (Ethnomusicology) from King’s College London. Her other interests include early modern history, Persian and Sanskrit literary cultures, courtly culture, and miniature paintings.


Dr Richard David Williams is Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at SOAS University of London. Having originally studied Theology and then Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford, his research brings music and sound studies into conversation with the study of religion and Indian cultural history. He received his PhD from the Music Department at King’s College London, with a doctoral thesis on the impact of colonialism on Hindustani music in the nineteenth century. He is currently writing two books: one on the circulation of musicians, genres, and musicologists between upper India and Bengal between c.1750-1900, and another on the history of musicology in Hindi. In his wider work, he has written on Pakistani popular music, Bengali-language musicology, the performance repertoires of courtesans, and the history of emotions. His research languages are Hindi, Brajbhasha, Bengali, Urdu, and Maithili.

Vivek Virani’s research explores connections between music and spirituality in diverse religious and cultural traditions, with a particular focus on religious music's role in the constructions of community, nation, and self. His current book project, Songs of the Unknowable Country, explores how songs of Kabir and other mystic poet-saints performed by folk musicians are used to negotiate issues of culture, religion, and nation in India and abroad. Vivek is also interested in cross-cultural musical analysis, and particularly in new analytical paradigms for Indian rhythmic composition and improvisation. He developed the World Music Analysis course for graduate-level music theory and ethnomusicology students at UNT, which he has taught since 2017.

The Society for Asian music recognized Vivek with the Martin D. Hatch prize for the best student paper related to Asian music presented at the 2015 meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Recently, he contributed a chapter on altered states of consciousness in classical tabla compositions to the volume Music and Consciousness 2 (Oxford University Press, 2019) and a chapter on caste-discrimination reform through devotional singing to the volume Songs of Social Protest: International Perspectives (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018). An article on performance practice and socioeconomic mobility among rural bhajan singers is forthcoming in the journal Ethnomusicology (Summer 2022).

Vivek is also a versatile performer. He regularly performs interfaith bhajan, kīrtan, Sufiānā and other spiritual songs in a mix of traditional and contemporary styles. He has trained intensively in Hindustani classical tabla under world masters Talayogi Pt. Suresh Talwalkar and Pt. Swapan Chaudhuri, bansurī (bamboo flute) under Radha Prasad, and is adept on many global percussion instruments. He is currently training in Dhrupad vocal under Pt. Uday Bhawalkar. In 2016, he contributed to the soundtrack of the Cannes festival-winning film The Cinema Travelers, in which he played 8 instruments in addition to providing vocals.

Dhrupad Vocalist, Darbhanga Tradition

Sumeet sees himself as a progressive traditionalist and that is true of his musical expressions as well. Born in an illustrious lineage of Dhrupad vocalists from the Darbhanga tradition, he was privileged to grow up in a musically rich atmosphere. His childhood training under his grandfather Shri Birendra Mohan Pandey and occasional guidance from his maternal grandfather Pandit Siyaram Tiwari (PadmaShree) gave him a solid foundation. After completing university education in Science and Management, he came under the tutelage of Pandit Abhay Narayan Mallick, grandnephew and master disciple of Pandit Ram Chatur Mallick (PadmaShree), who moulded Sumeet in to a professional Dhrupadiya. Today as one of the most promising talents in Dhrupad, he strives to present Dhrupad of the Darbhanga tradition in its traditional form, which lays equal emphasis on melodic expanse (alap) and composition (pada). He revels in the upaj based rhythmic improvisations, also known as layakari, which are synonymous with Darbhanga tradition. Sumeet broadcasts from All India Radio (A.I.R) New Delhi and regularly presents dhrupad recitals in major music festivals across India. He is an empanelled artist of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (I.C.C.R) and has presented Dhrupad recitals in Berlin, Hague, London, Prague, Budapest and Paris. Besides being a Dhrupad vocalist, Sumeet collaborates with musicians of diverse backgrounds from different parts of the world. He also puts his research and management experience to the service of music as a festival curator, organiser, thinker, speaker, writer and trainer. Sumeet regularly conducts lecture- demonstrations and workshops at leading educational institutions and teaches Dhrupad to students, both online and offline. His debut Dhrupad album titled ‘Morning Meditation’ was released on Naxos World (now ARC Music) in 2019.

Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye is Emerita Professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes – Paris Université Sciences Lettres, where she taught Indian literatures on performing arts of the Indo-Persian courts, in the Sultanate and Mughal periods, and medieval Hindi poetry sung in North Indian music. She is affiliated to the “Indian Studies” Research Unit of EPHE and Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle University, and associated with the “Centre for South Asian Studies”, EHESS, Paris. In addition to numerous articles published, and in preparation, on literature and music in the Indo-Persian context, F.N. Delvoye was the editor of Confluence of Cultures: French Contributions to Indo-Persian Studies (New Delhi, Manohar, 1994; rpt. 1995), and co-editor with Muzaffar Alam and Marc Gaborieau, of The Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies (New Delhi, Manohar, 2000; rpt. 2021). With Joep Bor, Emmie te Nijenhuis and Jane Harvey, she co-edited Hindustani Music: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries (New Delhi, Manohar, 2010, rpt. 2021). She was also the scientific co-editor with Prem Lata Sharma, of the first volume of Nūr-Ratnākar: A Bio-bibliographical Survey and Techno-historical Study, of all available important writings in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and other allied languages on the subject of song, dance and drama, and of Amīr Khusrau’s Prose Writings on Music in Rasā’il’ul I‘jāz, better known as I‘jāz-i Khusrawī, by Shahab
Sarmadee (Kolkata, ITC Sangeet Research Academy, 2003 and 2004 respectively).

Since 2002, she has been working with Yousuf Saeed, an independent scholar and filmmaker based in New Delhi, on documenting rituals and music performances in Sufi shrines (Nizamuddin, New Delhi, and Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh). She is currently preparing a volume titled Court Poet-Composers in Braj Language: Text, Context and Performance in Premodern India (c.1500-1700s) for Manohar, New Delhi, India.

Joep Bor is a musicologist, sarangi player and a botanist, and a professor emeritus at Leiden University. In 1990 he founded the internationally renowned World Music Department at Rotterdam Conservatory, and in 1997 the Jazz, Pop & World Music Department which he chaired until 2001. After this he was appointed professor of world music at the Codarts Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Rotterdam. In addition to about a hundred articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics, and entries in the leading music encyclopedias, Bor has written and co-edited seven books, including two exhibition catalogues. His monograph The Voice of the Sarangi was published in 1987 by the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Bombay, and The Raga Guide (with four CDs) in 1999 by Nimbus Records. It has received wide acclaim, three international awards, and was reprinted many times. Born in Amsterdam, Bor has lived more than seven years in India, carrying out botanical as well as musicological research. In 1968 he began studying sarangi with Pandit Ram Narayan. He had several other sarangi teachers, but his main guru was the vocalist Pandit Dilip Chandra Vedi. Bor has a Masters of Science in Botany and a PhD in South Asian studies. In 2008 he was Artistic Advisor of the Concertgebouw for the Amsterdam India Festival. At present he is completing a two-volume book called Ammani, the Celebrated Dancing Girl: Five Devadasis in Europe, 1838-1839.

Yousuf Saeed is an independent scholar and filmmaker based in New Delhi, making documentary films and writings on shared art and cultural traditions of South Asia since 1990. His films like Basant (1997), Boojh Sakey to Boojh (1997), Sufi Sama (1998), and Khusrau Darya Prem ka (2015) feature Indo-Persian music and literary heritage. In 2005-06, Yousuf produced a feature-length film Khayal Darpan about the classical music tradition in Pakistan, which has been screened worldwide. Yousuf has also written about Amir Khusrau's music heritage and the influence of India's 1947 Partition on Hindustani classical music. More details can be seen at http://yousufsaeed.com.

Pegah Shahbaz is a specialist of Persian language and classic literature. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and affiliated at the University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy - the Asian Institute. Pegah is also an active member of Perso-Indica research group and the section editor of the Fables and Tales section of Perso-Indica project. She works in particular, on Indo-Persian narrative literature and study the translation, transmission and domestication of Indian cultural heritage in Persianate literary culture of South Asia.

Dr. Assadullah Sho'ur was born in 1950 in Kabul, Afghanistan. He graduated from the Department of Journalism at Kabul University in 1975 and started working at Afghanistan’s State Radio TV as a news editor. In 1979, he received his MA degree from the institute of Social Sciences and in 1988, he finished his PhD on Persian oral literature at the Academy of Sciences of Soviet Tajikistan. Since Persian oral literature is inseparable from music, he started studying music and songs. His first work in this field was a research on folk songs and wedding songs. Since he started working at Afghanistan’s Academy of sciences, he has published several books on various subjects including the history of music in Central Asia, literature and oral literature, and song texts.

Traditional music of Kashmir is a unique case in the Indo-Persian world. Kashmiri traditional musicians play maqams that are mentioned in classic Persian texts on music, such as Navā and Busalik as well as maqams that are known in India as ragas, such as Tudi. Moreover, Persian poetry is widely used in the repertoire of the traditional music of Kashmir. The Saznawaz family is one of the remaining hereditary music traditions. Mushtaq Ahmad Saznawaz, Shabir Ahmad Saznawaz, and Mohammad Rafiq Saznawaz are the sons of the Late Ghulam Mohammad Saznawaz. The family tree goes back to Sultan Joo who immigrated from the western regions of Central Asia or Iran. The musical tradition was reportedly passed on to his son, Hadi Joo, and from him to his grandson, Sultan Joo, and from his grandson to his great grandson Wazir Joo, and then to his great great grandson Ramazn Joo who was the father of Ghulam Mohammad. Saznawaz family ensemble includes Mushtaq Ahmad on the Kamancheh (bowed), Shabir Ahmad on the Santoor (zither), Mohammad Rafiq on the Dukra (percussion), and Kaiser Mushtaq and Wajahat Shabir on the Kashmiri Sitar.

Shahwar Kibria Maqhfi, is a PhD student in Ethnomusicology, at the Herb Alpert School of Music, UCLA. She has an M.A. in Film Studies from Jadavpur University, Calcutta and an MPHil in Cinema Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her MPhil dissertation titled Qawwali in Contemporary South Asian Popular Cultures (2016) mapped the proliferation of the Qawwali music in the three spaces, of the urs / pilgrimage in the Sufi shrines of North India; Bollywood, and in international and digital music cultures. She is interested in exploring the expansive regime of Islamic/Sufi music. Her writings on spirituality, film and music may be found online at Firstpost and EPW.

With an academic background in cultural anthropology, Wajiha Naqvi is a music researcher, a vocalist and song-writer. Deeply involved with music from a young age, Wajiha spent her time at school and college singing at gigs and concerts but also continued to explore the understanding of music through its socio-cultural and historical context. Having completed her undergraduate degree at Lahore University of Management Sciences, she went on to obtain an Master of Arts at New York University (under the Falak Sufi scholarship) with a research focus on sacred music from the Islamic world, particularly South Asia. Since her return, she has consulted with the development sector and has worked extensively with civil society organizations on designing socio-cultural programs for peace-building. She has also been a visiting faculty member at the Szabist University and Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture where she has taught courses on the anthropology of music. She has been under formal training in North Indian classical music for the last 4 years under Rauf Saami and his father Ustad Naseeruddin Saami and first appeared on Coke Studio Pakistan Season 11 as one of the backing vocalists. This year she has been featured as one of the lead artists for the latest season of Coke Studio Pakistan under Rohail Hyatt and has also been working with him leading on research and creative strategy.

Dhruv Sangari (also known as Bilal Chishty), is a Sufi Vocalist, lyricist, composer and scholar based in Delhi. He leads a number of well known bands such as ‘Rooh Sufi Ensemble’ & ‘Humble Mystic’.

Initially trained in Hindustani classical vocals by Ustad Iqbal Ahmed Khan and the tabla by Pt. B.S. Ramanna he later trained in Qawwali under Ustad Meraj Nizami and subsequently the legendary Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khansahab.

Popularly known as ‘Prince of Qawwali’ Dhruv has several popular Bollywood, Television and Coke Studio@MTV tracks to his credit. Having performed in more than 15 countries, he has also recorded a number of album collaborations. A regular at most well known festivals such as Sufi Route headlined by AR Rahman, his work has been frequently covered by the media and press.

Empaneled with the Festivals of India Abroad, and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Dhruv is also founder of 'Ektara India', recognized by UNESCO for its contribution to scholarship on Sufi-Bhakti and syncretic themes. Over the last two decades he has taught, performed and taken workshops in a number of schools and universities both within India and overseas such as Stanford, Colby, Princeton, GW, NYU and John’s Hopkins.

Peter Manuel is an ethnomusicologist specializing in the musics of India, the Caribbean, and Spain, about which he has published extensively. Three of his eight books have earned prestigious awards, and one, Popular Musics of the Non-Western World, has been translated and published in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. His award-winning book Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae has sold over thirty thousand copies and is widely used as a textbook and reference book. Aside from his earlier book on Indo-Caribbean music and his forthcoming book on contradance in the Caribbean, his more than seventy scholarly articles include works on flamenco, chutney, the history of salsa, Puerto Rican music and identity, Indian classical music, Afro-Cuban song forms, the use of “riddims” in dancehall reggae, and other topics. An amateur sitarist, jazz pianist, and flamenco guitarist, he has also served as a copyright consultant on several cases involving Latin music and Indian music.

Saami Brothers Qawwal are a classically trained Qawwali group. They are one of the few custodians of the Traditional (Rivayati) Qawwali as exemplified in Khyal of the performance Hazrat Ameer Khusrau and Ustad Tanras Khan Sahab of the Delhi / Qawwal Bahche Gharana. The group are the sons of the much acclaimed Maestro Ustad Naseeruddin Saami.

My ethnomusicological research focuses on Sufi music of South Asia. For my PhD dissertation research, I did a year and a half of research on Sindhi-language Sufi poetry performance in Kachchh, Gujarat (western India), a border district adjacent to Sindh, Pakistan. My dissertation, “A Heavy Rain Has Fallen Upon My People: Sufi Poetry Performance, Emotion, and Islamic Knowledge in Kachchh, Gujarat” is a study of how poetry performance, especially of poetry by Shāh ‘Abdul Latīf Bhiṭā’ī (1689-1752 CE) has served as a means for the transmission of Islamic/ethical teachings in rural Muslim communities in Kachchh. This dissertation examines the role of affect and emotion in knowledge transmission, as well as Islamic reformist critiques of musical practice. In total, I've spent about three years in India since 2005 while studying music and languages (Urdu, Hindi, Sindhi, Kachchhi, Punjabi).

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at Stanford University. My teaching and research interests focus on connective histories of media, sound, and popular culture across modern South & Central Asia, and the Middle East.

My work incorporates questions regarding technology and citizenship, transnationalism and the fluidity of identity, gender and performance, and critical approaches to global history, postcolonial studies, and sensory history.

Having earned previous degrees in Architecture (B.A.) and City Planning (M.C.P) from the University of California at Berkeley, the foundation of my scholarship is built upon a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective. My study of the past is informed through the study of sounds broadcast in and beyond the built environment.

As a scholar and educator, and refugee and immigrant, I am committed to advancing a culture of equity and inclusion within academia through my activism and advocacy for diversity as well as my teaching and scholarship focused on the study of history through the experiences of marginalized peoples, places, and cultures.

Anthropologist and ethnomusicologist

Centre for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central Asian Studies
(CETOBaC) – Centre for Ethnomusicological Researches (CREM-LESC)

French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris

Presentation: “From Bollywood films to contemporary re-discoveries: Indian music through post-soviet Tajikistan’ gaze”

This paper examines the relationships entertained by Tajik musicians to Indian music, from the 1950ies until nowadays. Exploring the diverse sources and networks of the knowledge of Indian music by Tajik musicians as well as its sometimes idealistic and orientalist treatment, it reveals the convoluted social, political and religious paths and networks of the artistic relationships between the two countries.

Prof. Jean During is emeritus research fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research (Paris). His fieldwork covers several musical traditions of Inner Asia as well as Sufi and Shamanic rituals. He has published twelve books on these musical cultures, and numerous articles in scientific magazines and encyclopedia. His approach relies upon a thorough practice of Miidle-Eastern music. He contributed to the propagation of several great musical traditions by releasing more than 50 CDs with scientific notices and by organising many concerts in Europe and Asia featuring the best musicians of Inner Asia. In 2016 he received the Ziryab Award from the Tunisian Ministry of Culture for his contribution to the study of Arabic music.

George Mürer is an ethnomusicologist and filmmaker specializing in the music and culture of Kurdistan, Iran, Balochistan, and the Indian Ocean region. His PhD dissertation at the Graduate Center, City University of New York concerned musical and ritual arts among the Baloch communities of the coastal Arabian Peninsula. He is currently teaching at Hunter College and Brooklyn College.

Homayoon Mobaraki (Mobikey Productions)

January 31, 2021

The third event in the Indo-Persian Musical Confluence series featured a panel of eminent ethnomusicologists on Indo-Persian musical hybrids in Afghanistan and a performance on the rubab.

Panelists:
John Baily (Goldsmith University of London)
Lorraine Sakata (UCLA)
Mark Slobin (Wesleyan University)

Chair and Discussant:
Richard Wolf (Harvard University)

Performance: Music on the Rubab
Homayun Sakhi

November 22, 2020

The second event in the Indo-Persian Musical Confluence series features a panel that considers Persian poetry in Indian Music. The panel is followed by a performance by The Khusro Circle.

Panelists:
Suresh Chandvankar (Society of Indian Record Collectors, Mumbai)
Anoushka Deb (University of Delhi)
Syed Yaser Ali (Independent Scholar)
Pushpita Mitra (JNU-India)

Chair and Discussant:
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak

Performance: Indian Dance Inspired by Persian Poetry
The Khusro Circle, Pallabi Chakravorty (Swarthmore College)

November 8, 2020

The first event in the Indo-Persian Musical Confluence series features a panel that considers what musical modality reveals about transregional cultural connections across West, Central and South Asia. The panel is followed by a performance of Indo-Iranian music by Rahul Neuman and Naghme Sarang.

Panelists:
Taees Gheirati (UBC)
Deepak Paramashivan (University of Alberta)
Behzad Namazi (Ohio University)

Chair and Discussant:
Ann Lucas (Boston College)

Performance: Indo-Iranian Music
Rahul Neuman, co-director of the UCLA Music of India Ensemble, sitar
Naghme Sarang, UCLA Ethnomusicology alumna, kamancheh

Presentation Abstract: Indo-Persian Musical Confluences in Afghanistan as Evidenced Through the Lives of Musicians

Two institutions in Kabul, the royal court and the radio station, played an important role in establishing Indo-Persian musical influences in the musical taste of the urban elite of Kabul, and by extension, of Afghanistan. Much of the information about these two historical institutions is general knowledge, but today, I want to represent the musician’s perspective of this rather academic subject of Indo-Persian confluences by sharing what I know about four Afghan musicians, and one Pakistani musician whose perspective is from the outside,
looking in.

Presentation Abstract: “Northern Confluences”

My work, from 1967-72, was in the northern regions of Turkestan, Kataghan, and Badakhshan, where our topic, Indo-Persian confluence, was minimal. Locally, lots of confluence did go on, especially Turco-Persian, in the musical sharing of instruments, repertoires, and languages among Uzbeks and Tajiks, with smaller groups, like the Turkmens, as minor players.

Another active area, in the larger urban centers, was Kabul-Northern confluence, which kicked in when the isolated North was connected by the Salang Tunnel and nationwide radio broadcasting in the 1950s. The paper presents examples of the styles of confluence I observed, with audio and film examples.

Presentation Abstract: The Afghan rubâb at the Indo-Persian music interface

The Afghan rubâb is from a widespread family of double-chambered plucked lutes found in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent, such as the Pamir rubâb, the Dulan rubâb, the Kashgar rewap, the Tibetan dramyen, and the Sherpa tungna. Alyn Miner’s admirable monograph Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries mentions three types of rubâb found in Hindustan in that period: the Persian rubâb, the dhrupad rubâb and the Afghan rubâb. The Afghan rubâb as we know it today has three sets of strings; namely, three melody strings, three long drones and up to 15 sympathetic strings, the shortest of which also serves as a high drone. The instrument usually has four frets, giving a 12-note approximately equidistant tonal system. How the rubâb acquired its sympathetic strings and fretting is a matter of conjecture.

Pashto speaking Afghans (generally known as Rohillas) migrated to India over the course of many centuries, settling largely in an area between Delhi and Lucknow which came to be called Rohilkhand; its major city Rampur. Many Rohillas were professional mercenary troops, especially cavalrymen, who served the Mughals and other local rulers. They were also deeply involved in the import of horses, an important military asset, from Central Asia to the Subcontinent, thereby creating a trade route which might be termed the “Equine Road”, although many other goods besides horses passed along it. The Rohillas used the Persian rubâb as a military instrument, leading their mounted troops into battle. The so-called “Indo-Afghan Empire” was at its peak from 1710 to 1780.

It is my conjecture that it was in Rohilkhand that the Afghan rubâb emerged, with sympathetic strings adopted from the recently invented sârangi. Frets were added to make it easier to play. Seeking a musical style beyond Pashtun regional music, Rohilla musicians learned a simplified version of Indian music from dhrupad rubâb players and started to assemble a classical repertoire suited to their new instrument. The redesigned Afghan rubâb, with its newly acquired classical repertoire, then travelled up the Equine Road to Afghanistan and beyond, perhaps in the early 19th Century.

In the 1860s the Amir of Afghanistan, Sher Ali Khan, invited a number of nautch groups to Kabul to serve as court entertainers and music teachers for the aristocracy. Sher Ali Khan was followed by a succession of music-loving rulers of Afghanistan, notably Amanullah and his officially appointed Court Singer, Ustad Qassem. This was the time when the Hindustani ghazal, often with rubâb accompaniment, became the principal genre of vocal art music in Kabul, with texts drawn from the great traditions of Persian and Pashtun poetry, and a musical style rooted in that of Hindustan.

In the first part of the 20th Century the urban music of Herat, close to the border with Iran, was very much in the Persian style, with classical poetry sung to the accompaniment of the târ and santur. In those days the Afghan rubâb was little known in Herat. The new music from Kabul reached the city in the 1930s, when the eminent Kabuli singer and multi-instrumentalist Ustad Nabi Gol resided there for three lengthy periods under the patronage of a newly-appointed Governor from Kabul, eager to introduce the Heratis to the new music from the capital. On his first two visits Ustad Nabi Gol brought accompanists from Kabul but he also trained two young Herati musicians in the new style of music, Amir Jan Khushnawaz learned the vocal style of Kabul and played rubâb, while his brother Chacheh Ghulam played tabla. On his third visit Ghulam Nabi brought no accompanists, telling his students they were now qualified to play with him. In due course Amir Jan became the leading singer of the Kabul style in Herat and one of my main sources for classical compositions for the rubâb.

There are important differences between Afghan and Hindustani renditions of rag-based classical instrumental music. On a number of counts Afghan practice sounds and looks like a simplified version of Hindustani practice. It is reported that Ustad Sarahang, Afghanistan’s great singer, for many years the student of Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan in India, allegedly declared that everything done in the name of classical music in Afghanistan was wrong!

Photo credit: Liliane de Toledo, Geneva

Discussant

Performer, rhubâb

He was born in Kabul in 1976 into one of Afghanistan’s leading musical families. From the age of ten, he studied rhubâb—a double-chambered lute, and the national instrument of Afghanistan—with his father, Ustad Ghulam Sakhi. They worked in the traditional form of apprenticeship known as ustâd-shâgird (Persian for “master-apprentice”). In 1992, Homayoun and his family moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, a refuge for many Afghans from the chaos that enveloped their country following the 1979 Soviet invasion. In Peshawar, Homayoun’s talents were recognized and he quickly became a popular entertainer, and was known for playing a mixture of ragas and songs. He performed on the radio and on many television shows, alongside many of Pakistan’s popular singers and musicians.

Then in 2001 Homayoun moved to the United States. He settled in Fremont California, a city south east of San Francisco that claims to have the largest concentration of Afghans in the United States. In Fremont, he brought with him the sophisticated and original rubâb style that he had developed during his years in Pakistan. Homayoun quickly established himself as a leader of the local musical community, and received National and International acclaim for both his work as a performer, teacher and composer. He opened a school to teach Afghan music to children, recorded compact discs of popular Afghan songs, and became a sought-after performer. While continuing his community activities, he devotes as much as eight hours a day to practicing the rhubâb... As a composer, he has created works for Kronos Quartet, Hannibal Lokumbe, and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He has collaborated with many celebrated musicians from around the globe such as Yoyo Ma and, most recently Ustad Farida Mahwash.



He brought back to life a classical instrument that was no longer deemed “popular”. He pushed the traditional limits of the rhubâb and completely changed how the rhubâb is played and pushed it to its limits and beyond. He played the instruments sympathetic strings as well as the melody strings. Classic rhubâb players just picked down with the plectrum but he picked both up and down. In this new style he incorporated influences from the violin, guitar and sitar. He studied music from many different places, such a symphonic music, contemporary Indian and western music and developed a way to use those modern musical techniques on a classical afghan instrument. He worked hard, playing for long hours every day to create a completely different style, a complex picking style that uses rhythmic syncopation and playing off the beat. He completely changed the way the the rhubâb was perceived and played. Till now the rhubâb was an instrument used to accompany a singer. His innovation and unique style of play brought the rhubâb to a musical forefront and give the instrument a platform all to its own.

Homayoun’s personal story illustrates the extraordinarily challenging conditions he endured in pursuing his art. During Afghanistan’s many years of armed conflict, when music was controlled, censored, and finally, banned altogether, the classical rhubâb style to which he had devoted his career not only survived but reached new creative heights. His performance style has been shaped not only by the musical traditions to which Afghan music is geographically and historically linked, but by his lively interest in contemporary music from around the world. His artistry demonstrates how an imaginative musician working within a traditional musical idiom can enrich and expand its expressive power while respecting the taste and sensibility passed down from master musicians of the past. His exceptional talent and unswerving dedication to his art have brought him success on the concert stage, and he maintains an active performance schedule that takes him to cities around the world.

Anoushka Deb has finished her undergraduate degree in History from Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India. Her areas of interest include Gender studies, Art history, Revolutionary and War History, Early Modern Europe, Intellectual and Cultural history, Political and Social History of the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent between 12th - 17th centuries, and Colonial history. She presented a paper in Jesus and Mary’s College, University of Delhi, titled ‘Countries or Dustbins: The Issue of Toxic Colonialism’. Between May 23rd to June 21st 2019, she interned at the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, New Delhi, India, an organization that works to conserve tangible and intangible heritage of the country and spread awareness about it among school children. Currently, Anoushka is preparing for her post-graduation in History.

Pushpita is a research scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Her research interest is on Indian music studies concerning their socio-historical and political intersections along with sonic interventions. Her PhD work is looking at the musical culture of Bengal in the first half of the 20th century, dealing with questions on music modernity, identity and nationalism. She has also been learning Hindustani classical and other forms of Bengali regional music for the past fifteen years now.

Dr. S. S. Chandvankar
Retired scientist, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Hon. Secretary, ‘Society of Indian Record Collectors’ (SIRC) founded in 1991 in Mumbai, India.
The Editor, ‘The Record News’ – Annual publication of SIRC since 1991.
Author – Marathi Book – ‘Purvasurinche Sur’ – describing life and music of over fifty gramophone celebrities from 1902-1950.
Published over 200 articles on gramophone records and celebrities in Marathi, Hindi, and English. These articles are published in periodicals, newspapers and magazines.

A popular culture & art history enthusiast by spirit; B. Tech, IIT Kanpur (Computer Science) by academic background; an Entrepreneur & Corporate professional who has worked in Retail, HoReCa & Investment Banking industries in his career spanning 10 years, Yaser was born in Indore, India and is currently based in Mumbai.

Ann E. Lucas is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at Boston College. She teaches in the Department of Music and for the interdisciplinary Program for Islamic Civilizations and Societies. Her latest book is “Music of 1000 Years: a new history of Persian musical traditions. It was published by the University of California press in 2019.

Taees Gheirati was born in Mashhad, Iran. She began her path through Iranian music with singing and later playing santour at the age of ten. Her studies led to the University of Tehran, where she received her bachelor’s degree in Performing Iranian Classical Music. She completed a Master’s in Ethnomusicology at the Tehran University of Art. Ethnomusicology brought her to UBC, where she is a third-year student in the doctoral program. She has been taking Carnatic singing classes in the past two years which led her to the rich area of Indo-Persian studies.

Affiliation:
Taees Gheirati, PhD student in Ethnomusicology. School of Music, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Behzad Namazi (composer, ethnomusicologist, and multi-instrumentalist) received his Bachelor of Music Composition from Ohio State University in 2013, Master of Music Composition from Ohio University in 2015, and PhD in Ethnomusicology & Music Composition from Ohio University in 2020. Professionally trained on the violin, tar, and setar, Namazi has focused on studying the modal system of Persian traditional music. Namazi’s dissertation, on the Radif as Musical Syntax, investigates the ways in which the Radif (the canonic body of repertoire in Persian traditional music) functions as a system of melodic governance for composition and improvisation.

Dr. Deepak Paramashivan had his training in Karnatak classical vocal and theatre music from his father R Paramashivan, and learnt the Mysore style of Veena from D Balakrishna. He received B high grade in Veena from the All India Radio. He learnt the Hindustani Sarangi from Mr. Faiyaz Khan, and underwent advanced training under maestros Pandit Ramnarayan, Grammy winner late Pandit Dhruba Ghosh. He continues to learn from the world renowned Sitar and Tabla maestro Pandit Nayan Ghosh and broaden his repertoire under the guidance of Shri Prasad Khaparde of Rampur Sahaswan gharana.

He has toured Europe, USA, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea both as a soloist and collaborating with Ustad Aashish Khan, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, Pandit Yogesh Samsi, Abbos Kosimov and Pandit Birju Maharaj. He has played the Sarangi for A R Rehman's Roli seaboard and for the Hollywood music director Rick Boston's upcoming movie Messiaen. An active composer, Deepak released his first Indo-jazz fusion album titled the 'Jazz Sutra' in June 2019 in Canada. Deepak has given guest lectures and conducted master class on composition and music theories of the world at Berklee college of music and New England conservatory.

Deepak has a PhD in energy and climate engineering, with a gold medal, from the Indian Institute of Science. While working as a climate scientist in Canada, he received his second doctorate in Music from the university of Alberta.