Projects, Programs & Research
South Asian Music for the World
Below are highlights of the South Asian Music for the World series that we are privileged to have presented since 2022.
- Music of 100 Colors – interactive concerts in Dallas and Austin feat. Dr. Deepak Paramashivan on sarangi, a lesser-known instrument. Supported in part by the City of Dallas Office of Arts & Culture – April, May 2022 https://youtube.com/shorts/KPBPPFBv6E4
- Flowers in the Wilderness – poems of Resistance, Rebellion, and Love – a multidisciplinary, multilingual performance featuring spoken word performance of the poetry of Faiz Ahmad Faiz in Urdu, English, and Spanish with live music by Amie & Sangeet Millennium Ensemble with Spanish guitar by Miguel Antonio. Supported in part by the City of Dallas Office of Arts & Culture – Nov. 2022 https://youtu.be/9E8TNXX_-Eg
- Music and Yoga Retreat at Santa Fe Tree House Camp, Santa Fe New Mexico – a 4-day retreat featuring yoga, outdoor skills, and performances/workshops on South Asian, Andean, and jazz music. Curated and directed by Dr. Amie, Todd, Eich – July 2023
- Heer-Ranjha – A Love Sacred and Profane – a multidisciplinary, multilingual performance featuring dramatic recitation by Maryam Obaidullah Baig interpreting the Punjabi Sufi mystic Waris Shah’s beloved folk tale of forbidden love and transcendence with live music by Sangeet Millennium Ensemble and choreographed movement by Mudras in Motion. Supported in part by the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture – Oct. 2023 https://youtu.be/xNLQzouAfBk
- Strings and Skins Along the Silk Road – a multilingual concert of music from South Asia, Iran, and the Arab world. Featuring Sangeet Millennium Ensemble and guest performers. Supported in part by the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture – Oct. 2023 https://youtu.be/XCDXIhCyU4E
- Tarana, Tera Tali, Tangos Flamenco – an interactive, multidisciplinary concert of music and dance from three communities that have influenced each other. Featuring Hindustani music by Sangeet Millennium Ensemble with Kathak dance by Rinku B. Das, Flamenco music and dance by Flamenco Fever, and Rajasthani (India) folk music and dance by Katrina ji’s Rajasthani Caravan. Supported in part by the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture – Sept. 2024 https://youtu.be/5ByzOqW8p0E
- Poetics Across Continents – Words, Music, Movement – an interdisciplinary, multilingual event featuring spoken word performances of the poetry of Pablo Neruda, Rabindranath Tagore, and Federico Garcia Lorca in Spanish (Leticia Alaniz), Bengali (Rubana Farah Abida, Lopamudra Banerjee), English (Hathor Hendrix), and Urdu (Sadaf Munshi) with flamenco music and dance by Flamenco Fever, Hindustani music by Amie and Sangeet Millennium, and South Asian dance by Alpana Jacob. Supported in part by the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture – Feb. 2025 https://youtu.be/CYcoOaU7nWE
- Maihar Melodies – a tribute concert showcasing the compositions of the Maihar Gharana (a stylistic lineage of Hindustani music) legends: Baba Ustad Allauddin Khan, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and Ustad Aashish Khan. It featured performances by community members, Dr. Amie’s students, Sangeet Millennium Ensemble & Friends, and the renowned sarode master Shiraz Ali Khan, the youngest direct descendant of the lineage. Supported in part by the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture – April 2025
Pakistan
Dr. Amie has visited Pakistan five times since 2016 for various cultural diplomacy and ethnographic research projects. In 2016, she was selected as Artist/scholar by the US Consulate/Lahore Public Affairs Office. This entailed completing a tour through Lahore, during which she visited several leading universities and colleges, where she performed and interacted with students and faculty; toured the head office of the progressive theatre company Ajoka; performed at a progressive mental institution during their Art Therapy Day; performed at Faiz Ghar, the cultural space dedicated to the legendary modern Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz; and served as panelist and performed at the Foundation for Arts, Culture, and Education’s Music Mela in Islamabad.
In 2018, as part of a Texas-based team led by Dr. Michael Hirsch, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Huston-Tillitson University (Austin) that was awarded a grant by the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, she conducted training workshops on social science, education, and ethnomusicology research methods for diverse junior faculty selected by Pakistan’s Resource Commission, Khanaspur, Khyber Pakhtunkwa; and Fatima Jinnah Women’s University, Rawalpindi.
Amie also completed a residency as visiting artist-scholar by the National Academy for Performing Arts (NAPA) in Karachi where she performed in concert and led a workshop on doing ethnography. Read a review here of her performance at the National Academy for Performing Arts.
Also while in Karachi, she performed upon invitation at Peace Niche/T2F, opened for renowned Qawwali ensemble Fareed Ayaz-Abu Mohamed at their annual Munshi Rahimuddin Birth Anniversary celebration, and presented a lecture-demonstration on Hindustani music to elementary school students at Ilmester Academy.
In Lahore, she followed up on her interest in advocating for marginalized artists by participating in a program held at Fountain House that is part of an ongoing project to empower members of the Khwaja Sira (transgender) community, particularly seniors.
In Islamabad, she did an interview and performance at Power99 FM, a progressive digital radio station dedicated to empowering people in under-served areas of northern and central Pakistan through interactive radio education broadcasts in multiple lesser-spoken regional languages. The performance has been shared online by Power99.live.
In late 2019, traveled to Hunza, a remote mountain region in the far northern province of Gilgit-Baltistan, where she visited the innovative Leif Larsen Music Academy in historic Altit, dedicated to the preservation of the traditional music of the Hunza people, which launched her research on this community, currently ongoing.
She also conducted a 3-day workshop on ethnomusicology at Fatima Jinnah Women’s University, which included a sitar and tabla concert. In addition, she coached students in preparation for multidisciplinary performances, which they presented at the end of the workshop.
In 2023 Amie was awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist Grant to teach a month-long course hosted by the department of Anthropology and Sociology at Fatima Jinnah Women’s University in Rawalpindi. The innovative course, entitled “Folk Performance as Indigenous Knowledge and an Antidote to Extremism,” included a six-part series featuring four folk performance ensembles from different regions of Pakistan; a lecture performance by a celebrity cultural activist/performer/producer, Arieb Azhar; and an interactive talk by the leading Punjabi folklorist Prof. Saeed Ahmed. She co-taught course lectures with the Department Head, Prof. Muhammad Bilal. This tour also included several performances at various venues around Islamabad.
In 2024, supported by the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology, she visited Hyderabad, Sindh, and surrounding areas, where she conducted fieldwork on the Bhatt community of Hindu folk musicians. She also familiarized herself with the sacred music sung at the shrine of Sindh’s major Sufi saint, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, whose collection of folk tales in verse continues to influence the repertoire of most folk musicians in the area.
In addition, she returned to Hunza where she conducted fieldwork on Hunza indigenous music and cultural sustainability in the face of climate change. This included participant-observer work at LLMC, both learning about hareep, the indigenous music of Burushaski community of Hunza, and teaching introductory lessons in Hindustani music to the students.
As a finale to her trip, Amie performed on invitation at The Black Hole in Islamabad.
This trip resulted in two publications: “Folk Performance as Indigenous Social Commentary: Stories from Karnataka, India, and Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan,” a chapter (co-authored with Dr. Deepak Paramashivan) in the anthology Positioning Creativity in Ethnomusicology, edited by Jennifer LaRue and Brenda M. Romero (Routledge, 2025); and “Dancing Cultural Sustainability at the Top of the World: A Hunza Wedding,” an article in the journal South Asian Dance Intersections, Vol.4, No.1 (2026), Arshiya Sethi, Executive Editor.