Matt Rahaim – Hindustani vocalist
accompanied by, Abhinav Sharma – tabla and Abhijit Kshirsagar -harmonium
Matt has been performing Hindustani vocal music both in India and North America since 2000. His other performance experience includes oud, Afro-Cuban drumming, simulogue, shape-note singing, experimental vocal performance, Thank-You-Play, and Javanese gamelan. Matt also studies and teaches Middle Eastern music. In spring of 2010, he was studying oud performance and Arabic language in Damascus, Syria, funded by an ACM-Mellon Post-Doctoral fellowship; in 2012, he was a visiting fellow at the Center for Behavioral Research at the American University in Beirut.
Matt studied at Wesleyan University (BA, 2000) and UC Berkeley (PhD, 2009). His mentors in scholarship have included Bonnie Wade, Eve Sweetser, Vasudha Dalmia, Richard Crocker, Ben Brinner, Linda Hess, and Jon K. Barlow. His primary music teachers are Vikas Kashalkar and L.K. Pandit. Matt believes in the liberal arts, and he believes in going slowly.