EOL 5: Professional Weeping (Greene) About the Author Paul Greene is an ethnomusicologist and Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State
University. His research generally engages areas of intersection between traditional
musical culture and popular music. |
 Greene's
research interest in South Indian music began when he first heard violinist Adrian
l'Armand perform Karnatak music at an Indian restaurant in Philadelphia. For three years
he studied Karnatak violin. In 1993-1994, with a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, he
conducted field research in India, examining the ways that audio cassette technology
entered into and transformed traditional music-making practices in a Tamil village. The
project involved examination of performance dynamics in several Tamil folk music
traditions (including tirukkuttupattu, talattu, oppari, devotional songs, folk
epics, and rice transplantation songs), as well as new practices, networks, musics, and
commercial dynamics that emerged around cassette technology. The project has also resulted
in articles in Ethnomusicology and the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music.More recent research projects have taken him to Nepal, where he studies the traditional musics of the Newars, and also a new popular music genre, Nepali pop. He also facilitates forums for scholarly inquiry into the impacts and functions of sound engineering and music technologies around the world. The author holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches courses in ethnomusicology, jazz, popular music, western art music, Asian music, African music, cultural anthropology, and composition in electronic media. |