Department/College/UnitArts Division

TitleMr.

AffiliationGraduate

Other UCSC Campus AffiliationFeminist Studies Department

Primary Office LocationMusic Center

Mail StopMusic Center

Biography, Education and Training

Balakrishnan Raghavan is an accomplished musician, researcher, and educator. He is a doctoral candidate in Cross-Cultural Musicology with a designated emphasis in Feminist Studies and a Graduate Pedagogy Fellow at the University of California Santa Cruz. Bala's work focuses on oral traditions of music across the Indian subcontinent, with an emphasis on the politics of spirituality, South Asian performing traditions, caste, gender, and sexuality. Bala trained for over twenty years in traditional vocal music. With over ten years of interdisciplinary performance experience, he attempts to re-imagine the many ways of looking at traditional music from India, centering the marginalized experience at the intersection of song, poetry, sexuality, and personal narrative.

Teaching Interests

Indian Music 

Traditional Musics

South Asia

World Music

Women in Music

Spirituals 

Translation