Matthew Rahaim

Professor: Global Creative Studies / Ethnomusicology

Affiliate Faculty: Asian Literatures, Cultures & Media / Religious Studies / Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature

Recordings and Scholarly Publications here: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~mrahaim/index.htm

Matt Rahaim is a Hindustani vocalist in the Gwalior tradition; his guru is Laxman Krishnarao Pandit. Matt is also an ethnomusicologist, an improviser (analog synthesizers, voice, improvised conduction) and a composer (electroacoustic instruments, event scores, drone/dronebreaking, experimental counterpoint.) Matt's teaching includes musicking, intellectual exploration, and contemplative practice. Courses include Raga; Performance and Sociality; Sonic Ecology; Hindustani Musics; What do Voices Do?, and Practices of Listening.  

Matt's scholarly work focuses on raga music, phenomenology, and the mysteries of voice. His first book, Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindustani Music, dealt with the tacit bodily disciplines passed down through generations of Hindustani vocalists. His new book, Ways of Voice: Vocal Striving and Moral Contestation in North India and Beyond, investigates various traditions of voice production and vocal change in the Hindustani vocal ecumene. Recent philosophical essays include "Not Just One, Not Just Now: Voices in Relation" in the Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Ethnomusicology and "Object, Person, Machine, or What: Practical Ontologies of Voice," in the Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies. His research and review articles have appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies, Theory in Ethnomusicology Today, World of Music, Asian Music, Yearbook for Traditional Music, Gesture, The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies, Music and Empathy, and New Perspectives on Music and Gesture. He also is the author of the article "Music" in the Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism.

Other interests include voice studies, devotional performance, relationality, Sufi and Bhakti poetry, the anthropology of ethics, practical ontology, astral music theory, oration, the interface of raga and maqam, practices of listening, birdsong, and a critical approach to theories of tuning and temperament that bridges geometry, cosmology, and politics.

His other performance experience includes oud, Afro-Cuban drumming, simulogue, shape-note singing, Gregorian chant, experimental vocal performance, Thank-You-Play, and Javanese gamelan. Matt also studies and teaches Middle Eastern music. 

Matt studied music at Wesleyan University (BA, 2000), UC Berkeley (PhD, 2009). He has also studied privately, for the past two decades under masters of raga and maqam in Pune, Delhi, Damascus, and Beirut. In 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; in 2014, he was a visiting Fulbright fellow at Lalit Kala Kendra at the University of Pune. Before coming to the U of M, he taught Religious Studies, Music and Asian Studies at Berkeley, Stanford, and St. Olaf College. Matt believes in the liberal arts, and he believes in going slowly.