Jon Bullock is an ethnomusicologist with a recent Ph. D. from the University of Chicago. His 2022 dissertation, “Radio Kurdistan: Iraqi Kurdish Music, Colonial Power, and the Transmission of Tradition” examines the impact of sound technologies such as recording and broadcasting on the historical development of Iraqi Kurdish music. His ISM Fellows project takes as its object a set of Kurdish religious songs called qasidas , found in the recently-acquired Kurdish music archive at Yale. Bullock aims to make these songs more accessible to future researchers, as well as transcribing the song’s melodies, and translating the lyrics. The project addresses a dearth of contemporary research focused on sacred practice among the Kurds.
