I am an Assistant Professor of Musicology/Ethnomusicology at the University of Florida's School of Music. On this website I share my work as a music scholar, composer-performer, and ethnographer. Browse around to see my music, films, photographs, and writing. Currently I am a visiting research fellow at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music working on my book, Subversive Sounds: Music and Authoritarianism in Modern Iran
Ethnography
"Bards from the Land of Sun” is a short ethnographic film on dotar players in Iran's Khorasan region." It was screened in its complete form at Harvard VES school on May 3rd 2019. The current version posted here has omitted scenes/sequences with potentially sensitive material as a precaution. While this negatively impacts the flow and context of the film, nonetheless I hope this limited access can be beneficial to a broader viewership.
Khorasan is Iran’s largest region located on the country’s Northeastern periphery bordering Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, functioning as a bridge into Central Asia. Read more...
Music
When the COVID-19 outbreak reached its first peak last March I was in the city of Rasht in Northern Iran. Stay at home orders began, as did the advising of limiting travel between cities. I stayed in Rasht for over a month in isolation, playing music through the heavy atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and loss that had seemed to encompass everything. During my last days in Rasht I decided to make this recording to take a musical snapshot of what I felt during that time and how it manifested into music. Read more...
