ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the lives of the visiting musicians and the students at department of ethnomusicology at the University of Washington, distinguished by its unique rotating visiting artist program. It explores the connections of three different but intertwined strands extended over four decades or so of history and this is called as string theory. The three strands are self, discipline, and nation, or to put it more prosaically, how ethno musicology as discipline and India as nation have moved through history, and how these have intersected with the autobiographical movement through time. The chapter considers these three strands of history, using the study of musicians in India as the organizing principle by which they connect. It discusses the collecting genealogies, as with sarangi study, a method for developing a wider conversation with musicians about how they learned; who they studied with; how they practiced; what kind of ideological views they had about music generally and their music specifically.
