Dr. Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy

Dr. Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy

Board Member

Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy (B.A. Vassar College 1970; M.M. Yale University 1972; Ph.D. Brown University 1980), is a visiting faculty member in the Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA, where she teaches courses on the classical and folk musics of South and Southeast Asians and Asian-Americans, field methodology, ethnographic film, music and the sacred, and applied and public sector ethnomusicology. Amy’s research, writing, teaching, curating, and multi-media publications often have an applied focus aimed at community development of minority traditions, especially in diasporic settings.

Amy’s doctoral research on Karnatak music in Madras led her to co-direct documentaries on M.D. Ramanathan and T.N. Krishnan, both Padma Sri honorees. Her applied research includes projects with Cambodian-American refugees, Hmong-American tribal minority of Laos, and Sidi African-Indian Sufis of India, with documentaries on each. Her most recent video/DVD documentary, Music for a Goddess, concerns musical tradition and modernity among Dalit jogti musicians of the Deccan region of southern Maharashtra and Northern Karnataka. She and Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy co-directed Bake Restudy 1984, a documentary using Arnold Bake’s 1938 footage and audio recordings of sacred music in Tamilnadu, Karnataka, and Kerala, where she still continues to conduct applied research.