Autor: Gisa Jaehnichen, Jasmina Talam Juergen Elsner

Jürgen Elsner studied music theory, musicology and Arabic in Berlin, and was engaged from 1958–1970 as a Senior Assistant at the Humboldt-University in Berlin and the Karl-Marx-University in Leipzig. In 1970, he was appointed Lecturer and in 1975 Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Humboldt-University. His research covers modern German music history, as well as music cultures of North Africa and the Near and Middle East. He has conducted field-work in Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Syria and Kuwait, and has published a large number of books and articles on modern music history and Arab music. He founded the ICTM Study Group Maqam with H. Powers and F. Karomatov.Gisa Jähnichen, currently teaching at the Universiti Putra, Malaysia and working on musicology, anthropology, and audiovisual archiving, has been conducting research for more than 25 years in South East Asia. She obtained her Magister in Musicology and Regional Studies on South East Asia from Charles University, Prague, her PhD in Musicology from Humboldt University Berlin, and her University lecturer thesis in Comparative Musicology from the University of Vienna. She is an active member of the International Council for Traditional Music, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, and the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research.Jasmina Talam received her BA, MA and PhD degrees in Ethnomusicology from the Academy of Music of the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is Professor of Ethnomusicology and the Head of the Institute for Musicology at the Academy of Music in Sarajevo. Her primary areas of scholarly interest are folk musical instruments in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is an active member of the Musicological Society Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is the Chair of the ICTM National Committee for Bosnia and Herzegovina.