Stephen Slawek (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1986), Professor, joined the faculty in 1983, adding an Asianist's perspective to the curricular offerings of the ethnomusicology program. He specializes in the musical traditions of South Asia and has secondary interests in Southeast Asian music and American popular music. His publications draw upon extensive field experience and personal studies of performance practice in India. He has authored one book, Sitar Technique in Nibaddh Forms (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 1987) and, with Robert Hardgrave, Jr., co-authored Musical Instruments of North India: Eighteenth Century Portraits by Baltazard Solvyns (Delhi: Manohar Publishers 1997). He has contributed articles and reviews to several journals such as Ethnomusicology, Asian Music, The Yearbook for Traditional Music , Notes and Journal of Vaishnava Studies, and has articles in The Garland Encyclopedia for World Music: South Asia and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Professor Slawek has been a member of the Board of the Society for Ethnomusicology, is currently on the Board of the Society for Asian Music, and serves as editor of Asian Music, the Journal of the Society for Asian Music. A senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar, he has an international reputation as an accomplished performer on the Indian sitar. In addition to teaching undergraduate courses on Asian musics and graduate seminars in ethnomusicology, Professor Slawek directs the Indian Classical Music Ensemble.
This course will comprise a broad introduction to the musical traditions of India, with particular emphasis placed on the art music of North India, the system referred to as Hindustani sangita. We will study Hindustani sangita both as a system with its own principles of internal organization and as a tradition in interaction with other musical traditions in India, and with musics elsewhere in the world. In doing so, we will resort to models and theories drawn from the field of ethnomusicology to develop an understanding of Hindustani music as a constellation of culturally meaningful sounds.
understand the history of Hindustānī saṅgīta, and how its development has been interconnected with political and religious events in South Asia.
acquire a basic knowledge of available resource materials for furthering their knowledge of Indian music after leaving the course.
This course is being offered in accordance with University guidelines for courses intended to satisfy the undergraduate "writing flag" and “global cultures” flag requirements. Thus, the course will include a variety of assigned writing projects that, together, meet or exceed the guidelines for such courses.