I received my PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2014. Since completing my degree, I have held visiting and adjunct assistant professor appointments at Emory and Temple Universities. I write about Bengali Bāul-Fakir music and North American bluegrass music. In both areas, I deal with issues of appropriation, revivalism, and the role of music in constructions of national and communal identities.
My current book manuscript, Caging an Unknown Bird: Folk Revival and Persecution in Contemporary Bengal, engages critical debates across the disciplines of ethnomusicology, Asian studies, and religious studies, and explores issues of appropriation, revival, and national identity. The book focuses on elite representations of Baul-Fakir musicians and spiritual practitioners, from their exoticization by liberal audiences to their demonization by religious extremists. I explore how Baul-Fakirs navigate the competing currents of the Bengali cultural revival, evading persecution while seeking to embody their patrons’ romanticized ideals. I conducted my research in West Bengal and Bangladesh with support from the Fulbright Association, the Society for Asian Music, and Emory University. I have presented my research at conferences organized by the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Fulbright Program, the American Folklore Society, Harvard University, Visva-Bharati University, and the Stanford University Center for South Asia, and have published on this topic in Ethnomusicology, Asian Music, and Bhabanagara.
My second book project concerns negotiations of aesthetic, racial, and socio-cultural boundaries in the bluegrass world over the past fifty years. It builds on ideas explored in my master’s thesis, which received the 2011 Bluegrass Scholarship Prize from the International Bluegrass Music Association, as well as my forthcoming article in American Music. This article focuses on the 1970s bluegrass world, when conservative audiences rejected irreverent, experimental bands in favor of others that implicitly celebrated white working-class Southern identity. The article sheds light on a remarkable time in bluegrass history, when disparate social trends were clashing and commingling at Southern bluegrass festivals: the aesthetics and extramusical values of urban folk revivalism, a post-Beatles counterculture, a newly constructed bluegrass traditionalism, a nascent “world music” movement, and an ascendant aesthetic of smoothness in mainstream music.
Here is my C.V.
My current book manuscript, Caging an Unknown Bird: Folk Revival and Persecution in Contemporary Bengal, engages critical debates across the disciplines of ethnomusicology, Asian studies, and religious studies, and explores issues of appropriation, revival, and national identity. The book focuses on elite representations of Baul-Fakir musicians and spiritual practitioners, from their exoticization by liberal audiences to their demonization by religious extremists. I explore how Baul-Fakirs navigate the competing currents of the Bengali cultural revival, evading persecution while seeking to embody their patrons’ romanticized ideals. I conducted my research in West Bengal and Bangladesh with support from the Fulbright Association, the Society for Asian Music, and Emory University. I have presented my research at conferences organized by the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Fulbright Program, the American Folklore Society, Harvard University, Visva-Bharati University, and the Stanford University Center for South Asia, and have published on this topic in Ethnomusicology, Asian Music, and Bhabanagara.
My second book project concerns negotiations of aesthetic, racial, and socio-cultural boundaries in the bluegrass world over the past fifty years. It builds on ideas explored in my master’s thesis, which received the 2011 Bluegrass Scholarship Prize from the International Bluegrass Music Association, as well as my forthcoming article in American Music. This article focuses on the 1970s bluegrass world, when conservative audiences rejected irreverent, experimental bands in favor of others that implicitly celebrated white working-class Southern identity. The article sheds light on a remarkable time in bluegrass history, when disparate social trends were clashing and commingling at Southern bluegrass festivals: the aesthetics and extramusical values of urban folk revivalism, a post-Beatles counterculture, a newly constructed bluegrass traditionalism, a nascent “world music” movement, and an ascendant aesthetic of smoothness in mainstream music.
Here is my C.V.