10 Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK

Undergraduate program

Bachelor of Arts (Hons). Three years: • in Music. Studies in ethnomusicology, with detailed study of one or two musical cultures from Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, South-East Asia, East Asia or the Jewish world. • in Creative Arts. A multi-disciplinary program.

Graduate programs

Master of Music: • in Ethnomusicology. • in Performance in an Asian or African performance tradition. • in Music in Development. Master of Philosophy. Doctor of Philosophy.

The University of London is a federation of some forty colleges and institutes, not all of which offer programs in music. The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) was founded in 1916. No aspects of Western music are studied. All courses relate to the traditional art or folk musics of Asia and Africa and to the discipline of ethnomusicology. There are five language laboratories. A wide range of non-Western performance options is available. The School has established Javanese and Balinese gamelan ensembles, a Thai mahori ensemble, and has collections of African, Asian and Near and Middle Eastern instruments. The SOAS holds a number of special collections: • Field recordings, films and slides of South Asian music made by Arnold Baker from the 1920s to 1956. • A number of instructional or demonstrational videotapes, mostly produced by and inherited from the Ethnomusicological Audio-Visual Archive (formerly of Cambridge University), for musical instruments including koto, shakuhachi, kayagum, changgo, pakhavaj, tabla and various Thai instruments. • A large working collection of musical instruments, principally from India, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan and Korea but with many items from elsewhere. • Recordings relevant to Asian and African Studies built up since 1957. The AHRB Research Centre in Cross-Cultural Music and Dance Performance is housed at SOAS. The Department of Music actively encourages the publication of high-quality research through the SOAS ‘Musicology Series’. It also functions as the editorial office for the British Journal of Ethnomusicology. There are links with King’s College, University of London whereby King’s students may take courses in ethnomusicology, and SOAS students may take courses in Western music.

October 2022