Stephen Slawek

Stephen Slawek

Professor Emeritus of Ethnomusicology

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 served 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 directed the Indian Classical Music Ensemble and Kyai Rosowibowo, The University of Texas Javanese Gamelan Ensemble. While he officially retired in August 2022, Professor Slawek completed a final semester of teaching in Spring 2023 and has pledged to supervise his remaining doctoral students until they complete their degrees.

 

 

The Urge to Merge: Are Cross-Cultural Collaborations Destroying Hindustani Music?.  This Thing Called Music, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Philip V. Bohlman. New York: Rowman and Littlefield (2015)

Ethnotheory. The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture. (2019)

Contact Information

Teaching Areas

Musicology & Ethnomusicology, retired

Research Areas

Music of South Asia

Rock Music 

The Beatles

Education

Doctor of Philosophy
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Master of Music
Banaras Hindu University

Master of Arts
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Bachelor of Arts
University of Pennsylvania