This graduate student is available to deliver lectures to your K-12 classroom at no charge. All requests MUST be booked through the Middle East Center Speaker's Bureau.
Vincent Kelley is a Ph.D. student in Ethnomusicology with interests in South and West Asian music, jazz and Afro-American music, religion, and social theory. In 2016, Vincent received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Grinnell College and was a Fulbright researcher in India in 2016-17. He completed a M.Mus. in Musicology and Ethnomusicology from King’s College London in 2019, where he wrote a thesis on the historical, aesthetic, and social relationships among the tabla, naqqara (kettle drum), and kathak dance in North India. Vincent performs on drum set and tabla in jazz, Hindustani, and popular music settings in the United States and India. He also has a strong interest in Hindi, Urdu, and Persian language and literature and was an American Institute of Indian Studies Language Fellow in Lucknow, India in 2019. Vincent plans to pursue a dissertation project centered around the international musical, political, and cultural interactions fostered by the Jazz Yatra festivals in post-Independence Mumbai and Delhi, India.