Michael Bakan

Michael Bakan, Professor of Ethnomusicology, Head of Ethnomusicology and World Music, and Director of the Sekaa Gong Hanuman Agung Balinese Gamelan, did his undergraduate studies in percussion performance at the University of Toronto (B.Mus. 1985) and his graduate studies in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D. 1993). He is the author of  the book World Music: Traditions and Transformations (McGraw-Hill, 2011), which is in its second edition and has been adopted  at more than 150 universities and colleges nationwide and internationally; and Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur (University of Chicago Press, 1999), which was reviewed in The Times (London) as one of the two “most significant publications on Balinese music in almost half a century.” His other publications include peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters covering a wide range of topics, from the ethnomusicology of autism, Balinese gamelan, and world percussion, to multicultural music education, film music, electronic music technology, and jazz history. He is the series editor of the Focus on World Music book series published by Routledge and directs the Artism music project, a program for children on the autism spectrum and their families that has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and other agencies. Bakan performs regularly with the Latin music group Cuarteto del Sur, is active as a composer of neo-traditional and experimental works for Balinese gamelan, has held offices in the Society for Ethnomusicology and College Music Society, and has been an invited speaker or visiting professor at numerous institutions including Harvard, Yale, the University of Washington, and the Berklee College of Music.

Dr. Bakan maintains a personal website at www.michaelbakan.com.