About
Overall, my research concerns the origins and status of music in Islam and the cultures of music production and consumption in Muslim-majority countries and their diasporas. In Summer 2014, I conducted a small-scale ethnography of traditional Bengali music practitioners in the Bangladeshi-Los Angelino community, the presentation of which factored into a performance of mine at the 28th annual cultural convention of the Federation of Bangladeshi Associations in North America (FOBANA) held in Los Angeles that summer. In Spring 2016, I further pursued the topic of music as a means for building group solidarity and soliciting feelings of home and nation among the Afghan-Austrian diaspora in Vienna. Between August 2017 and 2018, I investigated issues of permissibilty vis a vis the performing arts in Islam among performing artists and Islamic scholars in seven Muslim majority countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Morocco). Between August 2019 and 2020, I explored the dhikr and sama’ sessions of various Sufi groups in New York City including those of the Jerrahi, Naqshbandi, and Inayati orders. Currently, I have turned my attention to the music of Rohingya refugees in Chicago and the phenomenon of Sufi-adjacency as manifested in sonic performance. Within the purview of such research topics, my writings explore issues in migrant, minority, voice, and postcolonial studies and generally reflect a keen investment in creative expression that straddles or transcends cultural, national, and/or religious boundaries. Beyond my academic pursuits, I perform a number of raga and raga-based musics including khayal and Nazrul sangeet and to a lesser extent al-musiqa al-’arabiya, jazz, and karawitan jawa tengah.