Photo by John Parrotta

Blog Posts by Priya Parrotta:

Historian, Composer, Singer and Author

Priya Parrotta

About

Priya Parrotta is a musician, historian, and author whose work dismantles and transcends borders to unite humans with each other and the more-than-human world. Priya believes firmly in the possibility of a world in which we are able to traverse persistent boundaries, heal from historical injustice, and unite to protect the ecosystems we love. 

As a historian, Priya seeks to elucidate the complexities of the hierarchies of the modern world, in ways that help us to better understand the art and practice of coexistence. Her first book explores several ways in which colonial divides in the Caribbean were subverted by the cultural pluralism which so defines this region. Her second, completed manuscript examines the ways in which music can serve to challenge the most prevalent geopolitical borders which separate the world’s islands from one another. Her current book project details how relations of reciprocity in the coastal neighborhood of Waikīkī, Hawai’i, were fractured as a small group of commercial elites created the beach tourism industry in the late Gilded Age.

As a singer and composer, Priya’s music draws upon her formal training as a classical vocalist and her extensive engagement with music from South Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean. Her songs express environmental critiques, hopes, and calls to action in ways that resonate across geographical, cultural and social divides. Through music, she seeks to support a planetary consciousness which stands in contrast to the anthropocentrism which is so central to our current paradigm of market- and tech-driven globalization. 

Priya was educated in History (Colonialism & Globalization) and Music at Brown University, and briefly studied as a postgrad at the University of Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment. She is now completing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Aberdeen’s School of Divinity, History and Philosophy. Priya has previously worked for the Smithsonian and the Red Cross, and was a Founding Leader of The Sanctuaries, the first multifaith arts collective in the US.