Guy Beck

Guy L. Beck is a scholar, author, musician, educator, historian of religions, and musicologist. A Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellow and Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, he is Lecturer in Religious Studies and Asian Studies at Tulane University, and Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at Loyola University New Orleans. As a scholar and historian of religion, Guy Beck is the first to publish a comprehensive study of the nature and function of sacred sound in the Hindu religion, which was developed by applying the category of 'sonic theology'. In a sequel work, he has provided the first extensive analysis of ritual and music in Hinduism through the paradigm of 'sonic liturgy'. As an educator, he has created the first college textbook on music in the major world religions with an accompanying CD of recordings. As a musician, Beck is the first American performer of Hindustani vocal music, the first to earn a vocal music degree in India, and the first to perform vocal music in an all-India conference of Hindustani classical music.