Carol Silverman (vocals) has been involved with Balkan and Romani music and culture for over twenty-five years as a researcher, teacher, performer, and educational activist.

An award-winning professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Oregon, she teaches and writes about Balkan folklore, ethnography, and human rights issues among Roma.

Based on fieldwork in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and New York, her research analyses the relationship among music, politics, ritual, and gender. She has performed with Zhenska Pesna and Trio Slavej and teaches Balkan singing nationally.

She was the educational coordinator for the 1999 Gyspy Caravan tour. Carol met Bulgarian musicians of Ivo Papasov, Yuri Yunakov, Neshko Neshev, and Salif Ali in the 1980s when she was researching folk music in Bulgaria.