Stephen Slawek is Professor of Music (Musicology/Ethnomusicology) and core faculty affiliate of the South Asia Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. He teaches academic courses in ethnomusicology, with a concentration on the musical traditions of South Asia, as well as the performance practice of the sitar and tabla. He was instrumental in acquiring the Butler School’s Javanese gamelan, and has been directing that ensemble for the past four years. As a sitar disciple of the late Pandit Ravi Shankar, he has performed on that instrument extensively in India, Europe and the United States, sharing the stage with such notable musicians as Zakir Hussain, Swapan Chaudhuri, Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari, Kumar Bose, and with the late maestro himself, Pandit Ravi Shankar. He has authored publications on various aspects of the musical culture of India and, since 1977, has presented papers at scholarly conferences here and in Europe and India. He has served on the Council and the Board of Directors of the Society for Ethnomusicology, is a former editor of Asian Music, the Journal of the Society for Asian, has served as Chair of the Ethnomusicology Committee of the American Institute of Indian Studies.
