About.
As both a scholar and an artist, I specialize in musics and performances that transgress boundaries of some kind, whether race, gender, language, genre, or nation. I examine these performances from both aesthetic and political perspectives, interrogating the motivations that go into the performative crossing of identity categories as well as the technical demands that inform these transgressions of genre.
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I hold a dual PhD in Music and Theater and Performance Studies from the University of Chicago, an MA in Music from U Chicago, and a BA in Anthropology from Princeton University.
I am a lifelong practitioner of Carnatic music and have spent the past two decades training under flute maestro Shashank Subramanyam. I specialize as an accompanist for Bharatanatyam and South Asian classical dance more broadly. I also serve as the Artistic Director and flautist/vocalist of The Amarkalam Project, a Chicago-based Indo-jazz performance ensemble with which I released my debut album in 2025. As a scholar-practitioner, I am interested in questions of improvisation, embodiment, and intra-ensemble communication, as well as the transmission and pedagogy of oral traditions that do not fit neatly into Eurocentric modes of analysis.
