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Michael Bakan

Email Address mbakan@fsu.edu

Phone 850-644-4255

Office LON 413

Michael Bakan is Professor of Musicology, Head of the World Music Ensembles Program, Affiliated Faculty in Asian Studies, and director of the Sekaa Gong Hanuman Agung Balinese Gamelan. His more than 100 publications encompass an array of topics and theoretical approaches, including music and neurodiversity, the ethnomusicology of autism, Indonesian gamelan, early jazz history, world percussion, disability studies, phenomenology, electronic music technology, applied ethnomusicology, music and the body, community music, and interdisciplinary connections between ethnomusicology and music therapy. They include the books Music and Autism: Speaking for Ourselves, World Music: Traditions and Transformations, and Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur.

Bakan has performed as a drummer and percussionist with everyone from George Clinton and the legendary funk band Parliament to John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Tito Puente, Johnny Rawls, Rudolf Serkin, the Music at Marlboro Festival Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Players, and several leading gamelan ensembles in Bali, Indonesia. Recordings include A History of the Future with Longineu Parsons and Brian Hall, Medicaid Fraud Dogg with Parliament, Planetary Funk with George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars, and Ashrei with Omnimusica (first ballot entry for best world music album, Grammy Awards, 2015).

He has served on the Board of Directors of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Central Fellowships Committee of the American Council of Learned Societies, and as president of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Southeast/Caribbean Chapter. He currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the British journal Ethnomusicology Forum and as series editor for the Routledge Focus on World Music Series, is a two-time recipient of the University Teaching Award at FSU, and maintains an active schedule as a guest lecturer, performer, and clinician at institutions worldwide, such as Harvard, Yale, and Columbia universities; the universities of Toronto, Chicago, Colorado, and Washington; and the Berklee College of Music, University of Music and the Arts in Graz, Austria, and State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.


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