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Daniel M. Neuman (1944-) was the Mohindar Brar Sambhi Chair of Indian Music and Interim Director of the Herb Alpert School of Music, University of California, in Los Angeles, California. He has taught at Dartmouth College and University of Washington. Neuman received both his Bachelor of Arts and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Illinois, in Champaign County, Illinois.

Necdet Yaşar (1930 - 2017) was a tanbur lute player and teacher, from Nizip, a small town near Gaziantep, Turkey. He graduated from the School of Economy, Istanbul University in 1953. As a student he first played bağlama before switching to tanbur. He played tanbur as a soloist or in a group in many foreign countries: United States, Canada, England, France, Holland, Belgium, Finland, South Korea and Israel. From 1972 to 1973 and 1980 to 81, Yaşar was a resident artist of Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where he gave lectures on the makam system of Ottoman Classical Music. Yaşar also performed as a tanbur artist and an ambassador of Turkish Classical Music with small or large ensembles including his own "The Necdet Yaşar Ensemble" in Europe, East Asia and North America. Yaşar is noted for his command of the Turkish makam melodic modes, his influential tanbur techniques, and the construction of his taksim improvisations.