Dr. Stephen Slawek is an ethnomusicologist whose main research focus is the musical traditions of South Asia. He received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, a MM from Banaras Hindu University, a Master’s Degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and finally a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently is a professor in the ethnomusicology program at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a core faculty affiliate of the South Asia Institute. Dr. Slawek has been a member of the faculty at UT Austin for over 30 years and directs the Indian Classical Music Ensemble and the Javanese Gamelan Ensemble. He is an accomplished performer on the Indian sitar, and was a senior disciple of the late Pandit Ravi Shankar. He has performed with Shankar numerous times and created an important connection with him that shaped Sklawek’s passion for not only the sitar, but the classical music of India as well.
Dr. Slawek has numerous publications focusing on the musical traditions of South Asia, and more specifically the performance practice in 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. Dr. Slawek believes that the appeal of studying Southeast Asian music is finding and showing a meaningful connection between the organization of sound and how it is used within the culture. He acknowledges the numerous approaches and fields of study within ethnomusicology as a whole, and has stated, “I believe the integrity of the discipline is its inclusive nature that celebrates diversity, both of the subject matter it engages and of the approaches it takes in studying its subject.”
