PASSINGS

Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy

Expert on the music of India

Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, 81, the founding chairman and professor emeritus of UCLA’s department of ethnomusicology, died June 20 of lung cancer at his home in Van Nuys, according to the university.

With his comprehensive knowledge of India’s folk, classical and popular music, Jairazbhoy had an international reputation as a researcher, teacher and administrator. He joined the UCLA department of music as a full professor in 1975 and became the founding chairman of the new department of ethnomusicology and systematic musicology in 1988. He retired from the university as professor emeritus in 1994.

He was the first nonwhite president of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 1975 and was named honorary life member in 2005.

In the mid-1980s, he established India’s Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology in New Delhi.

Jairazbhoy was born in England of Indian parents. He earned a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of Washington and a doctorate in Indian music from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

He began his studies in the 1950s playing, presenting and writing on Indian classical music.

He also developed a passionate interest in the little-documented folk music traditions of India and Pakistan and spent much of his career bringing that music to broader public attention.

Ray S. Anderson

Theology author and professor

Ray S. Anderson, 83, longtime Fuller Theological Seminary professor and prolific author of academic and popular works, died June 21 in Fountain Valley of complications from kidney failure, the school announced.

His books “The Shape of Practical Theology� (2001) and “An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches� (2006) had wide influence among Christian ministers, and his 1994 study “The Gospel According to Judas: Is There a Limit to God’s Forgiveness?� helped revive debate about the deceitful disciple in academic as well as popular circles.

Anderson taught theology and ministry for more than 30 years at Fuller in Pasadena, directing courses on influential theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Anderson received his divinity degree from Fuller in 1959, having arrived at the seminary at age 31, older than most incoming students at that time. A native of Wilmot, S.D., he had worked on a farm for several years after serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II and earning a bachelor’s degree from South Dakota State.

He was also a practicing pastor in Southern California, founding the Covina Evangelical Free Church in 1959 and most recently ministering at Grace Lutheran Church in Huntington Beach.

Anderson earned a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 1972. He taught theology at Santa Barbara’s Westmont College for four years before returning to Fuller in 1976.

-- times staff and wire reports [email protected]