Robert E. Brown

Robert Edward "Bob" Brown (18 April 1927 – 29 November 2005) was an American ethnomusicologist who is credited with coining the term "world music". He was also well known for his recordings of music from Indonesia. Many of these recordings, among the first widely distributed and commercially available in the United States, inspired a generation of musicians to study and perform Indonesian gamelan music.

Brown grew up in Clinton, New York. He had a very extensive background in music while still young. He played timpani and bass drum in a band, double bass and cello in the school orchestra and accompanied the school chorus on piano. A sponsor enabled him to study music theory at the Utica Conservatory with Johannes Magendanz and study piano with Clara Magendanz. He performed the first movement of the Schumann piano concerto with the high school orchestra during his sophomore year.

The same year, he held the job of organist at Hamilton College. He also performed popular music with his own band, Bobby Brown and His Swingsters. During his undergraduate years at Ithaca College and his graduate studies at Cornell University he continued to work as an organist.

Bob Brown started his doctoral studies at UCLA as a piano major in 1953. After Mantle Hood began teaching at UCLA the following year, Brown switched to ethnomusicology and became Hood's first teaching assistant. Brown received his doctorate in ethnomusicology from UCLA. His dissertation was titled The Mrdanga: A Study of Drumming in South India (1965). He studied and played the mridangam.

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