Professor, Department of Musicology

Mārtiņš Boiko was born in 1960 in Latvia. He studied flute performance and music theory at Emīls Dārziņš Secondary Music School and went on to study at Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (JVLMA), graduating with honors in 1984.  In 1995 he successfully defended his doctoral thesis “The Lithuanian sutartinės. A Study of Baltic Folk Music” at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Hamburg and received his Ph.D. degree in philosophy that was later equated in Latvia to a Dr.philol. (Doctor of Philology) degree.

Mārtiņš Boiko has worked at the Folklore Library of the Literature, Folklore and Art Institute of the University of Latvia. Since 2005 he is a guest professor and the Head of the Department of Communications of the European Studies Faculty of Riga Stradiņš University. He teaches at JVLMA since 1982. In 2004 he was appointed the state professor of JVLMA. He has authored scientific publications on Baltic traditional music, vocal polyphony, acoustic bio-communications and music, oral tradition of Catholic psalmody, recitative, music and death, identity and music, music of Russian Old Believers in Latvia, silence and keeping quiet, soundscape and acoustic environment. Mārtiņš Boiko teaches numerous theory and practice courses in ethnomusicology study programmes and in other programmes on undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral levels.