When he produced for Afropop Worldwide in the early 200s, Joseph Braude was author of The New Iraq (Basic Books, 2003), and wrote a weekly column for The New Republic on arts, culture, and politics in the Middle East. Fluent in Arabic and Persian, he studied Near Eastern languages and literature at Yale and Arabic and Islamic History at Princeton, and has resided in Iran and the United Arab Emirates as an academic fellow. During his residence at Dubai’s Jum’a ‘l-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage, a library and museum of Gulf culture, he studied the unique intersection of African and Asian cultural influences in the music and poetry of the Arabian Gulf. Braude is also a semi-professional Oud player who enjoys sitting in with local bands on his frequent visits to the Middle East.
