AFGHAN MUSIC WEEK: concert, lectures, film screenings, music workshops and other events focusing on the music of Afghanistan, with the participation of Distinguished Visitor, Professor John Baily (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK), ethnomusicologist, film maker, musician, and world-renowned Afghan music expert. 9-14 February 2009
Introduction
The 
Department of Music and the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology host an Afghan Music Week from February 9 to 14, 2009, on occasion of the visit of Professor John Baily (Goldsmith College, University of London) to the University of Alberta supported by the Office of the Vice-President (Research) through the Distinguished Visitors Fund. The Week features a series of lectures, film screenings, music workshops and other events focusing on the music of Afghanistan. A highlight of the Week is a concert organized in partnership with the Edmonton Raga Mala Music Society, exploring the musical connections between Afghanistan and India, and featuring musicians from the Edmonton Afghan community, John Baily on the Afghan rubab and Soumik Datta from the United Kingdom on the South Asian sarod. The Week will be inaugurated with the presentation of a newly made rubab by outstanding local instrument maker Abdul Wardak, commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology for its Instruments Collection with the generous support of the University of Alberta Museums and the Friends of the University of Alberta Museums.
John Baily is Professor of Musicology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. After completing fieldwork in Herat and Kabul between 1973 and 1977, he has established himself as one of the most authoritative experts worldwide in the music and culture of Afghanistan. His monograph Music of Afghanistan: Professional musicians in the city of Herat (1988) has become a classic of ethnomusicological ethnography. Combining his background in psychology and social anthropology with the cultural study of music, John Baily has contributed to the discipline of ethnomusicology not only a rich body of scholarship on Afghanistan, but also influential publications of a more theoretical kind, notably in the domains of music cognition, music performance and body motion, music and politics, music and migration, and ethnographic film-making. In addition to his academic profile, Professor Baily is an accomplished and very active musician and an advocate for the promotion and regeneration of Afghan music in response to almost thirty years of war in Afghanistan. He is also an experienced and prolific filmmaker. Some of his ethnographic films will be screened during the Afghan Music Week, including the award-winning Amir: An Afghan refugee musician's life in Peshawar, Pakistan.
For the full program, click here. February 9-14, 2009
Sponsors:
Distinguished Visitors Fund
Edmonton Raga-Mala Music Society
University of Alberta Museums
Friends of the University of Alberta Museums
Department of Music / Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology
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