School of Music

Immersed in both the traditional contexts of world music and emerging contemporary applications, this Specialization is designed to give students the skills necessary to lead by example in this, genre-bending field of modern world percussion and hand drumming.

Students have access to the School’s African, North Indian and Indonesian specializations, as well as group and private instruction in Latin percussion, Brazilian percussion, Persian percussion, Arabic percussion and the study of frame drums and other hand-drumming traditions from around the world.

In addition to developing their practices in the contexts of traditional world music, students also focus on contemporary experiments in performance, including the opportunity to work with a large array of electronic percussion controllers, composition and improvisation, drawing from the creative eclecticism of the larger CalArts community, as well as the rich cultural diversity of Los Angeles as a global crossroads.