The Ethnomusicology area welcomes new faculty member Vivek Virani.

Vivek Virani is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at UCLA, completing his dissertation with the guidance of Daniel Neuman, AJ Racy, Timothy Taylor and Aamir Mufti. His dissertation explores how songs of South Asian devotional poet-saints are used to negotiate issues of culture, religion, and society at the regional and national levels. His broader interests in ethnomusicology include music and spiritual expression; music and community-building; music, religion and nation; and Indian classical music. Vivek has trained in classical tabla performance under world masters Suresh Talwalkar and Swapan Chaudhuri. He regularly performs South Asian classical, folk, and devotional music on tabla, bamboo flute, and other instruments. Recently, Vivek has contributed a chapter on altered states of consciousness in classical tabla compositions to be published in the volume Music and Consciousness 2 by Oxford University Press, and a chapter on caste reform through devotional singing to be published in the volume Songs of Social Protest.