Eben Graves

Mellon Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Music, 2016-18

Eben Graves is an ethnomusicologist with research interests in South Asian devotional performance, music theory, religious aesthetics, music and colonialism, and theories of commodification. He earned a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2014 with a dissertation studying padavali kirtan, a genre of Hindu devotional song and storytelling widely performed and enjoyed in the Indian state of West Bengal. Using ethnographic and historical methods, his current book project studies intersections between musical time and the temporal dimensions of devotional religion, cultural nationalism, and economic exchange in padavali kirtan. His research has been supported by fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, where he was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer (2015-16). His research has been published in Ethnomusicology (forthcoming), the Journal of Vaishnava Studies, and Oxford Bibliographies Online: HinduismHe is also an active performer in a range of styles and instruments from South Asia, with an emphasis on the Bengali khol.

Degrees from Other Institutions: 
PhD
Ethnomusicology
University of Texas at Austin
2014