Yale Institute of Sacred Music

In this episode, Dr. Suhail Yusuf joins Sindy Yang (MAR '24) for a conversation about his identity and work as an ethnomusicologist and performing musician. They also dive into discussion about his main instrument, the sarangi, with its rich history and profound cultural connotations.

In this episode of the ISM Fellows Podcast, Dr. Peter Boudreau sheds light on time in Byzantium through his work on Byzantine calendar icons. Dr. Boudreau also discusses the complexity of Byzantine time, the relationship between images and text, and the future of studying Byzantium.

In this episode, Dr. Cory Hunter speaks with Sindy Yang (MAR ‘25) about his research on gospel music. They also discuss how his background training in music performance, religion, and theology brings innovation to his methodologies as a scholar. What results is a freshness brought to the discipline of musicology at large, and new ways … Read More Read More

In this episode of the ISM Fellows Podcast, Dr. Samantha Slaubaugh offers insights into her work on Douceline of Digne as a rare paradigm of liturgical practice among the Beguines of Marseilles. Dr. Slaubaugh also discusses the way in which Douceline of Digne, through her unique practice of liturgy, is situated in her medieval community … Read More Read More

As an ethnographer of art, Dr. Katie Dimmery's work focuses on the ways in which communities and identities are shaped by artistic ritual in the southwest region of China. Her research attends to the practices of indigenous ritualists and how these practices are situated in regional ethnic and social politics. This conversation traces the history … Read More Read More

Dr. Ephrem Aboud Ishac discusses his work with ancient Syriac manuscripts, the ways the church and scholarly communities can benefit each other, and the challenges facing the preservation of these ancient texts.

Jon Bullock, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale's Institute of Sacred Music, joins Ariana Hones (M.Div '25) for a conversation on how radio is used as a tool for shaping Kurdish identity. Using the lens of ethnomusicology and the sacred, Jon discusses the impacts of colonialism and technologies of sound, such recording and broadcasting on Kurdish … Continue reading Across the Airwaves: Exploring Kurdish Identity Through Radio Broadcasting →

Dr. Jeremiah Lockwood joins the Fellows Podcast to chat about the sounds and stars of the cantorial golden age. He also talks about keeping busy — and keeping up— with a rich and varied life as both academic and professional musician.

Grounded in themes of tribulation, redemption, and hope, ISM Fellow and theater professor Dr. Ron Jenkins joins Ariana Hones (M.Div. '23) in conversation on the transformational power of Dante's Divine Comedies inside prisons. In this episode, Dr. Jenkins discusses his course, Gospel, Rap, and Social Justice, and his use of Dante's poetry to create theater … Continue reading Toward Freedom: The Power of Art Inside Prison Walls →

In his interview with ISM M.A.R. student Madeleine Hutchins '23, ISM Fellow and religious ethicist Ryan Darr pulls no punches in talking global climate crisis: “…we're entering a mass extinction event, which would be, from what scientists have found about life on Earth, the sixth in Earth's history — and the first caused by one … Continue reading Ryan Darr and the Ethics of Apocalypse →

Dr. Bernard Gordillo in conversation with Ben Bond discusses his current work at the ISM with the Nicaraguan Catholic Folk Mass and its connection to social justice movements, and liberation theology. Included as well is a conversation about Dr. Gordillo's future work on mission bells in the state of California and their history of sonic … Continue reading Sound, Resistance, and Liberation: Catholic Sonic History of Latinx and Indigenous Communities in the Americas – Dr. Bernard Gordillo →

ISM fellow and composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen explores his latest composition fusing gospel text, pan-African sound, and the passion tradition. He also chats about his earlier operatic work that engages the sounds and figures of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle.

ISM Fellow and art historian Catalina Ospina investigates the oral production of resin-glossed mopa mopa objects by indigenous colonial Andean artists in her project, Identifying and Subverting Epistemic Asymmetries in the Colonial Andes.

Kati Fitzgerald explores the embodied religious performance and practices of Tibetan Buddhist lay women in her ISM Fellows Project, “No Pure Lands: The Contemporary Buddhism of Tibetan Lay Women.”

ISM Fellow Dr. Carla Neuss explores education and the transformative power of theater, medieval and modern, asking “When theater accomplishes something, or does something within us or within the audiences, how does it actually DO that?”

ISM Fellow Dr. Melanie R. Hill explores how African American literature mutually influenced and informed Black womanist preaching. “Literature, music and theology . . . all of these elements have really been the heartbeat of who I am — not only of my research, but of who I am as a scholar and an artist.”

The ethnomusicologist Rebecca Dirksen discusses Haiti—a nation particularly vulnerable to climate change and subject to dire injustice in the aftermath of natural disasters—and the concept of Mizik Angaje, socially or politically engaged music within the context of Voudon traditions with Ben Bond, a Master of Divinity student at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale … Continue reading ISM Fellows in Conversation: Ep. 4: Music Research and Ecological Activism in Haiti →

The African musicologist Jean Ngoya Kidula talks about the multi-layered musical and religious landscape of Kenya, a crossroad of musical influences from Tanzania, Zimbabwe, the Congos, and South Africa with Ben Bond, a Master of Divinity student at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.

Christopher-Rasheem McMillan, scholar and choreographer, talks about Christianity, dance, gender, color, and queerness with Clare Byrne, a master's degree candidate at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.

Marie-Ange Rakotoniaina, a liturgical scholar whose work focuses on early Christianity, discusses how Augustine re-envisioned the Sabbath in a wealth of spiritual imageries with Jake Cunliffe, a Master of Divinity student at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.

Conductor David Hill talks to composer Iain Farrington, who has made an arrangement of the Brahms Requiem for chamber orchestra. We will hear a movement from the work as performed by Yale Schola Cantorum in a recording on the Hyperion Label.