Andre Elias

Andre Elias (guitar/voice) is an avid com­poser and per­former of a vari­ety of gui­tar styles (fla­menco, clas­si­cal, metal), of Indian Clas­si­cal music (tabla, sitar, sarod, nagara), and of per­cus­sion from West-Africa, Cuba, and the Mid­dle East. He is pur­su­ing a Ph.D. in Eth­no­mu­si­col­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton and con­cur­rently com­plet­ing an MA in the Jack­son School of Inter­na­tional Stud­ies’ South Asia pro­gram. His research inter­ests range from pop­u­lar to clas­si­cal music in India, Spain and the Amer­i­cas. The areas of his aca­d­e­mic focus include the­o­ret­i­cal issues such as dias­poric dis­place­ment, iden­tity, meta­physics, spir­i­tu­al­ity, vio­lence, nation­al­ism, and cross-cultural ped­a­gog­i­cal issues in music. In the last few years, he has spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time trav­el­ing to South Asia and learn­ing Indic lan­guages for his dis­ser­ta­tion research on tra­di­tions of Indian slide-guitar. With famil­ial roots in Cal­i­for­nia and Chile, Andre con­sid­ers the west coast his home.