Philip Bohlman's teaching and research covers a broad range, with special interests in music and modernity, folk and popular music in North America and Europe, Jewish music, music of the Middle East and South Asia, music and religion, and music at the encounter with racism and colonialism.

A pianist, he also is the artistic director of the New Budapest Orpheum Society, a Jewish cabaret ensemble at Chicago. He has written and published extensively, and among his most recent publications are World Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, USA, 2002), The Music of European Nationalism (ABC-CLIO, 2004), and Jewish Music and Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2005).

The New Budapest Orpheum Society has released the double-CD Dancing on the Edge of the Volcano (2002). Current projects include books on music drama in the Holocaust and a translation of Johann Gottfried Herder's writings on music and nationalism. Bohlman was awarded the Edward Dent Medal by the Royal Music Association in 1997 and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin in 2003.