Theodore Levin

Theodore Craig Levin (born 1951) is an American ethnomusicologist. He is a professor of music at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and earned his undergraduate degree at Amherst College and obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Levin has focused his research on the people of the Balkans, Siberia, and Central Asia. His recordings from these regions have been released on various labels. Levin served as the first executive director of the Silk Road Project, an initiative of the American cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He also served as chair of the Arts and Culture sub-board of the Open Society Foundations. Currently he is a senior project consultant to the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Levin began studying Central Asian forms of music in 1974. Since then, he has written several books, including The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) (first published in 1996). He chronicled his journey to Tuva in his book Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond (first published in 2006). Books Levin's first book, The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York), was published by Indiana University Press in 1996. It was republished in 1999. In it, Levin chronicles his travels across Central Asia from 1977 to 1994. Levin records information about various musical genres and traditions, such as shashmaqam, suvara, and dastan as well as a variety of folk genres. The book provides a detailed account of Central Asian folk customs in Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The volume was published with an accompanying 24-track CD with location recordings.