DIALECTS OF DHOL
Sounding Subaltern Memory and History through a Himalayan Drum
How can we hear the music produced by Dalit bodies in contemporary South Asia as more than a premodern relic? This multi-modal project, funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities and AIIS Senior Research Fellowship (2023-24), focuses on Dalit drummers in central Himalayan villages as agents of collective memory and history.

E1 | Pritam Bhartwan
A village drummer becomes an icon.
E2 | Saloor-Dungra
The story of one village through musical practice.
E3 | Dhol & Damaun
The history of places through drum rhythms.
E4 | Hidden Voices
Stories of women in Garhwali music.
E5 | Beating Through Caste
Labor and resistance in the Himalayas.
E6 | Generations
Drummers young and old speak out on Garhwal’s future.
E7 | COVID19
How the global pandemic affects the livelihood of musicians.
This film series, co-produced with my former student Jarrod Welling-Cann, explores musicianship in the Garhwal Himalayas in relation to a range of complex issues including gender and cast discrimination, religiosity, and social mobility.
LET THE GODS DANCE
A Documentary Film Series

THE INTANGIBLES OF CULTURAL HERITAGE
Ramman is an festival of “ritual theater” performed annually with masked dancing and drumming in the Indian Himalayan village of Salood-Dungra. Since the festival was designated as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009, it has gone through dramatic reforms resulting in codification, commercialization, and exclusion. This chapter grapples with the effects of “heritagization” on the production and maintenance of community as an evolving set of concepts and affectively charged practices.

Dimentia and the Arts
MUSIC MAKING COMMUNITY
NOISE IN THE QUEEN CITY
This volume, co-edited by myself and Tony Perman and compiled in honor of Tom Turino’s contributions to ethnomusicology, explores the unique and tangible ways in which musical practice actively contributes to the making (and sometimes the unmaking) of community. The book foregrounds music’s potential to transform community for the better by centering the value of difference in productive feedback dynamics of music and community, and by asserting the need for mutual moral indebtedness in community formation.
An ongoing collaborative research project with graduate students at the College-Conservatory of Music to examine the ecological and social implications of noise in Cincinnati, in all of its manifestations. In the following StoryMap you can see an example of this collaborative research as we explore noise through the nexus of environmental justice, civil rights and public health.
MUSICAL AWE
Since 2020, neurologist Dr. Rhonna Shatz and I have offered a community-based program called “Dementia and the Arts” that pairs music and medical students at the University of Cincinnati with persons with neurodegenerative disease in the community, as well as their care partners. Meeting weekly in groups of four over the course of a semester, the students and community members build relationships through mindfulness and musical activities. This service-learning course has generated new data that informs a deeper understanding of the connections between the experience of musical awe and functional connectivity in the brain.
Connecting Through Music
PERFORMANCES
Jagar Performance with Pritam Bhartwan
Jagar" is a Hindu ritual practiced in Uttarakhand, India, to awaken gods and seek their favor or justice. It involves invoking deities through music and storytelling, often drawing from epic tales like the Mahabharata and Ramayana.
"The Spirit Within Sitar" Ithica University
For the third installment of the college’s Raga workshop series, A Master Class on Sitar, Dr. Fiol was invited to conduct a master class in traditional Hindustani, or North Indian, music and Raga theory.
The "Naked World Ensemble" with Om Srivastava and Ali Morshedlou
Naked World Ensemble is a silk road music group that combines the musical instruments and styles from China, India and Iran through improvisation.
The "MbiraCats" Ensemble Performing "Karigamombe"
The Mbira Ensemble is one of many "World Music Labs" offered at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory, which includes Tabla, Raga, Sitar, and Dhol Labs. Here is a performance that was recorded during the COVID19 lockdown.