[1] His early works showed the influences of Bela Bartók, Igor Stravinsky and Carl Nielsen, joined in the 1950s by 12-note serialism, but from the 1960s his music began to reflect his work as a musical ethnologist (A L′inconnu for voice and 13 instruments, 1962): he did fieldwork in Greenland and the Persian Gulf and taught at the universities of Lund (1967-9) and Copenhagen (from 1969).
[2] Piano: Orchestral: Operas: His major contributions to ethnomusicology included his pioneering work in the music of the Persian Gulf, especially Bahrain.
as his name's initials came to symbolize his name) introduced the names of famous performers from Arab States of the Persian Gulf, such as Salem el'Allan, Ahmad Bou Tabanja, Al-'Amiri among others, and Lebanese singer Dunya Yunis, whose tape singing Abu Zeluf was published on the Tangent 2LP set 'The Human Voice in the World of Islam' which Olsen published with another musicologist Jean Jenkins.
[4]) Olsen's invitation of Arab-Luth (`Oud) player Munir Bashir to a music festival in Denmark in the early 1970s, brought this instrumentalist together with an Indian performer where they played duos in a hybrid style.
This exquisite and new style brought Bashir into fame all over the Arab world and in many European countries.