Nicholas Ragheb

Bio

Nicholas Ragheb is a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received an M.Mus. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin. His current research is focused on the sacred music traditions of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt and the Coptic diaspora in North America. He is exploring how the performance, transmission and conceptualization of liturgical hymns is changing in conjunction with the use of particular web-based audio archives, social media platforms, mobile phone applications, and other online educational tools. Nicholas also teaches the theory and performance of traditional Arabic music. He has studied privately with professors at the Music College of Helwan University in Cairo, Egypt and he performs on the reed flute (n?y), lute (‘ud) and hand drum (darb?kah or ?abla).