Suhail Yusuf

Education

ABD in Ethnomusicology, Wesleyan University (2019)

M.A. in Music, Wesleyan University (2016-18)

B.A. (Hons) in Music, Prayag Sangeet Samiti, Allahbad, India (2010-13)

Hindustani music training under Sabri Khan (deceased) and Kamal Sabri (1997 – 2015)

Suhail is a scholar-performer in Hindustani music, the art music tradition of North India, exploring issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and exclusion as they pertain to the performance, circulation, and reception of music both past and present. Currently, a PhD. candidate at Wesleyan University and a visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Hartt School, University of Hartford. He brings together expertise from a performance career that has extended over 20 years, a creative ability, and the academic research to find new modes of expression in Hindustani music. His doctoral dissertation, “Bridge Overtones: Lessons from the Sarangi” is the first in-depth ethnomusicological study of the North Indian bowed instrument tradition by a hereditary sarangi player. He has been featured on more than fifteen albums and signed to Domino records, U.K. Navarasa: Nine emotions, an album with the multilingual U.K. folk-Hindustani trio Yorkston/Thorne/Khan, was voted Number 1 in The Guardian’s Best of 2020 listings.

Interest Areas

• History
• Religion
• Hindustani (North Indian art) music
• Performance studies
• Ethnomusicology
• Race
• Gender
• Post-colonial theory