Staff Spotlight: Eben Graves

Eben Graves is a scholar and musician, as well as being assistant director of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and director of its fellows’ program. 

He began his journey at the ISM as a postdoctoral fellow from 2015-16 when he taught classes on music in South Asia and engaged in a project entitled “Sacred Songs in Shrinking Markets: Religious Aesthetics, Temporal Organization, and Padāvalī-Kīrtan in West Bengal”, research that culminated in his 2022 book, The Politics of Musical Time: Expanding Songs and Shrinking Markets in Bengali Devotional Performance.This work explores how temporal dimensions of sacred music influence and shape social life in South Asia, offering readers a profound understanding of the cultural and social dynamics at play.

Graves’ recent scholarly contributions include a chapter titled “Bodies with Songs: The Sounds and Politics of Interstitial Lyrics in Bengali Devotional Performance,” published in Religious Sounds Beyond the Global North: Senses, Media, and Power, a volume in the Global Asia series of Amsterdam University Press. Additionally, his active engagement in academic discourse is evident from his presentation of the paper “Sustaining Musical Time: The Dynamics of Musical Labor, Politics, and Value in Bengali Devotional Performance” at the Musical Sustainabilities Symposium, held on November 18-19, 2024, in Seinajoki, Finland. This event was sponsored by Uniarts Helsinki, further underscoring the international recognition of his work.

Graves holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin, where he distinguished himself with a dissertation on padāvalī-kīrtan, a genre of Hindu devotional song originating from eastern India. His academic and research pursuits have consistently focused on the intersection of music, religion, and social change in South Asia, cementing his reputation as an expert in the field.