BENJAMIN KOEN, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology

Dr. Koen specializes in medical, cognitive, and applied ethnomusicology, approaching music, health, and healing from a holistic perspective—exploring and engaging the biological, psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual factors that comprise preventive and curative practices in diverse cultural and clinical contexts. In particular, Dr. Koen’s research concerns music-prayer dynamics, meditation, entrainment, cognitive flexibility, the physics and metaphysics of sound, devotional music, spirituality and religion, race, indigenous flutes, improvisation, the Middle East, Central Asia, China, North America, and Jazz. His publications appear in Ethnomusicology, Asian Music, The World of Music, Studies on Persianate Societies, Encyclopædia Iranica, and the Tajik journal Fonus, among others. His current projects include the monograph Music, Prayer, and Healing Beyond the Roof of the World, which explores the culture-dependent and culture-transcendent principles and processes that undergird music and healing practices in Badakhshan, Tajikistan, as well as in other cultural contexts; he is co-editing a volume from an historic interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Florida State University Colleges of Music and Medicine titled Music, Medicine, and Culture: Medical Ethnomusicology and Global Perspectives on Health and Healing; he is conducting research on music the mind and mediation, ability-centered improvisatory musical play for children with special needs, and the creative healing arts for older adults. Dr. Koen was a music presenter for the historic Smithsonian Folklife Festival The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust. For one year he lived in northeast China, where he held a college faculty position teaching music, culture, and language. There he learned the xiao bamboo flute, and continued his studies of tai chi, chi gong, jan juang, Chinese philosophy, and religion.

Koen received B.M. (jazz studies), the M.M. (cognitive ethnomusicology) and Ph.D. (medical & cognitive ethnomusicology) degrees from the Ohio State University. As a jazz musician (tenor & soprano saxophone, flute, bass clarinet), he has performed in over thirty countries and has been a member in the bands of David Murray, Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Billy Bang, and D.D. Jackson, among others. Koen has published three recordings as a leader and appeared on numerous recordings as a sideman. He also plays several traditional flutes and the didgeridoo, as well as many African and Middle Eastern drums.