May 4, 2006
May 10 film features music of Afghanistan
Ethnomusicologist John Baily, head of the Afghanistan Music Unit and head of the Centre for Contemporary Music Cultures in the Music Department of Goldsmiths College, London University, will speak at a special seminar and show his film, A Kabul Music Diary, on Wednesday, May 10 at the UW School of Music.
In October 2002 John Baily returned to Kabul to see what was happening in the world of music one year after the defeat of the Taliban. His film documents a variety of musical activities and identifies some of the dilemmas facing those seeking to help Afghans to re-build their music culture.
John Baily holds a personal chair in Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He gained doctorates in experimental psychology and social anthropology (ethnomusicology); he also holds a postgraduate degree in documentary filmmaking.
He has conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, and Pakistan, and with a Gujarati Muslim community in Britain. Baily’s main research interests are in performance, visual ethnomusicology, the biology of music making, and music and migration.
The seminar will be from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. in 27 Music. The film showing will be at 3:30 p.m. in 213 Music. The whole program is free and open to the public.
