Profile

Shalini Ayyagari

Assistant Professor
Department of Performing Arts

  • Shalini Ayyagari is a specialist in the regional musical practices of North India. She received her doctorate in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, “Small Voices Sing Big Songs: The Politics of Emerging Institutional Spaces among Manganiyar Musicians in Rajasthan, India,” examined intersections of development initiatives and music-making as members of the Manganiyar hereditary musician community are founding their own non-governmental organizations to grapple with community and caste issues in northwestern India. She is currently working on a project which examines the India-Pakistan border region as a site for borderlands music-making, and is specifically looking into the role of Sindhi Sufi music in the creation of of place in this region. Ayyagari is an avid tabla and Balinese Gamelan player.

  • Degrees

    PhD, Ethnomusicology, UC Berkeley
    MA, Ethnomusicology, UC Berkeley
    BA, Music, Swarthmore College

  • OFFICE

  • CAS - Performing Arts
  • Katzen Arts Center - 234

  • CONTACT INFO

  • (202) 885-3431
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  • FOR THE MEDIA

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    at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Teaching

  • Spring 2013

    • GNED-110 General Education Area 1 Topic: World Music
    • Description
    • GNED-213 Sophomore Seminar Areas 1 3: Music and Islam
    • Description

  • Fall 2013

    • GNED-213 Sophomore Seminar Areas 1 3: Global Cinema, Global Music
    • Description

AU Expert

Area of Expertise: Music of South Asia (India and Pakistan), Bollywood film music, South Asian American diasporic music

Additional Information: Shalini Ayyagari worked closely with a group of Manganiyar — a Muslim caste literally translated as beggar — that live in the borderland between India and Pakistan who traditionally play classical and folk music for Hindu life-cycle observances and holiday celebrations. Ayyagari documents the cultural shift in the Manganiyar’s lives and music as these largely illiterate villagers transition to a life of means influenced by cultural interactions with foreign tourists and their own travel as performers. For her Fulbright IIE–funded dissertation research on the Manganiyar community, she filmed over 200 hundred hours of footage and is currently developing a full-length documentary.

Media Relations
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