Ethnomusicology Review Bloggers
Christophe Apprill and Sara Le Menestrel
Christophe Apprill is a sociologist and associate researcher at the Centre Norbert Elias of the EHESS, at URMIS (Université Paris 7-Diderot) and at the Observatoire des Publics, des Professionnels et des Institutions de la Culture (Oppic). His research explores the social processes at work in the world of amateur and professional dancers.
Alexandra Apolloni
Alexandra M. Apolloni holds a PhD in Musicology from UCLA and is currently the Program Coordinator at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. Her research focuses on vocal performances of race and gender, and her work has been published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, Women & Music, Hippo Reads, The Toast, and other publications. Her book, Wishing and Hoping: Voicing Modern Femininity in the 1960s, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Benjamin Bean
Ben recently earned his Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability at Goucher College. He currently teaches Cultural Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University (Brandywine Campus), coordinates an urban farming project at One Art Community Center in West Philadelphia, and regularly performs in Steppin Razor, an original roots rock reggae band.
Tarek Benchouia
Tarek Benchouia is an artist and scholar from Texas. Currently based in Chicago, he is a Ph.D. candidate in performance studies at Northwestern University.
Amy Brandon
Amy Brandon is a guitarist, composer, and the creator of ScientificGuitarist.com. Holding degrees in jazz guitar performance and composition, she is currently completing an interdisciplinary PhD in music cognition at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Joshua Brown
Joshua Brown is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at UC Riverside. His dissertation addresses how Andalusian histories, landscapes and performance spaces relate to musical and social practices within flamenco communities in Seville and Morón de la Frontera, Spain. Other research interests include the politics of identity and race, cultural memory, social movements, political activism and the bearing of historical conceptions and constructions on the discipline of ethnomusicology.
Amanda Cannata
Amanda Cannata is a fourth-year doctoral student in musicology at Stanford University. She is currently doing research in Santiago, Chile and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her dissertation is titled "Music and Structures of Identity at International Expositions in the Americas, 1875-1915."
Julius Reder Carlson
Emeritus Ethnomusicology Review Editor-in-Chief Julius Reder Carlson is a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and a doctoral candidate in musicology at UCLA, where he researches and writes about topics including Argentine folk music and Felix Mendelssohn.
David Cashman
Dr. David Cashman is a Senior Lecturer in music within the School of Education and the Arts at Central Queensland University. His research track record is around the areas of music and place, particularly the nature of music and touristic representation, and popular music in India. As well as ongoing research in music and tourism, he is undertaking an ethnographic and social research project into English-language popular music in Delhi.
Logan Clark
Logan is a second year MA/PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her academic interests include religious ritual music among Guatemala's indigenous populations, cultural rights and government arts preservation, and the glocalization of hip hop. She sings in the UCLA jazz vocal ensemble and the Mariachi ensemble. She is also a Beethoven fan, and if you ask nicely, she will show you the "Ode to Joy" tattoo on her right foot.
Mike D'Errico
Mike D’Errico is a PhD candidate in the UCLA Department of Musicology and the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate Program. His research interests and performance activities include hip-hop and electronic dance music, video games and generative media, and sound studies.
Caroline Davis
Caroline Davis is a saxophonist and vocalist living in Brooklyn, New York. She maintains an active performing schedule in several bands, most notably her own soul/R&B group, Maitri and collaborative jazz trio, Whirlpool. In addition, Caroline teaches Psychology of Music for DePaul University in Chicago, and Music Together for families at Eastside Westside and Music Together in the City in New York City.www.carolinedavis.org@maitrimusic
Benjamin Doleac
A native of New Hampshire, Ben Doleac received his Master's degree in Ethnomusicology from the University of Alberta in 2011 and is currently pursuing a PhD in the same field at the University of California, Los Angeles. His master’s thesis, “Ready to Spread?: P-Funk and the Politics of Signifyin(g),” addresses utopianism, rhetorical play and coded political commentary in the music and mythology of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.
Ben Dumbauld
Ben Dumbauld is a PhD student at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He received a BM in Jazz Performance and MA in Ethnomusicology at Arizona State University. His current scholarly interests include musical performance in underground, subcultural, or diasporic communities; performance studies; music of Eastern Europe; and interrelations between the body and technology in contemporary musical practice. Currently he is working on his dissertation, which focuses on embodied states of diasporic subjectivity among musicians and audiences within the Romanian community in New York City.
Sarah Hankins
Sarah Hankins is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at Harvard University. She is completing dissertation fieldwork on African and Afro-diasporic musical communities in Tel Aviv, Israel, and also researches queer musical performance. Her articles and book reviews appear in Black Music Research Journal, Popular Music, Anthropos, and City and Society (forthcoming). Hankins is a DJ and dance music producer.
I Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena
I Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena is an Indonesian artist and scholar. Putu’s interests are rooted in gamelan, improvisation, and metal music, while dealing primarily with high adrenaline activity, embodiment, and cosmology theories. His musical works directly highlight exigency of performance in peak physical states, which provoke praxis of micro-temporality. Putu has performed with gamelan and improvisation ensembles around the United States and Indonesia; most recently with Gamelan Pandan Arum from Los Angeles, Gamelan Tunas Mekar in Denver, and Sanggar Manik Galih in Bali.
Aindrias Hirt
Aindrias HirtAindrias Hirt is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Music and Irish & Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand through a full international scholarship. His topic is investigating heroic narrative song (the origin of recitative) still found in marginalized cultures in Europe, particularly the songs of Fionn Mac Cumhaill. He is analyzing song recordings made from the 1950s which have survived in a living tradition; they date from the Late Middle Ages.
Carolien Hulshof
Carolien Hulshof holds an MA in Musicology from the University of Amsterdam. She currently works as a researcher at the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels, Belgium, where she leads the research project The Formalized Fiddle, funded by POD Science Policy. For this project, digital data on fiddles from all over the world are gathered and analyzed on similarities, differences, evolutions and migrations. In the framework of the project she has travelled to Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Congo-Brazzaville, to research the prevalence and role of the fiddle in Africa.
Meghan Hynson
Meghan Hynson holds an MA in ethnomusicology from UCLA and is currently studying at ISI Denpasar (the Balinese Arts University) under a fellowship from the Indonesian Ministry of Education. Meghan's research interests include: Balinese gender wayang, Balinese gamelan, West Javanese angklung, Indian devotional music, Chinese guzheng, and world music education. In 2011, Meghan received the Society for Ethnomusicology Elizabeth May Slater Prize for the paper she presented at the annual conference on world music education.
Michael Iyanaga
Michael Iyanaga is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at UCLA. He is currently in Bahia, Brazil conducting dissertation research on the topic of domestic rituals for Catholic saints and samba-de-roda.
Joe Kinzer
Joe Kinzer is an Ethnomusicology PhD student in the School of Music at the University of Washington. In 2012 he received his M.M. degree from Northern Illinois University with a concentration in Ethnomusicology and Southeast Asian Studies. Joe also holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies, plays guitar in his free time, and is learning the oud with an interest toward its uses in muzik Melayu (Malay musics).
Ryan Koons
Ethnomusicologist and countertenor Ryan Koons is completing his PhD in ethnomusicology at UCLA. His dissertation research focuses on Muskogee-Creek Native American ceremonial music and dance and derives from a collaboration of more than a decade with the Florida-based Palachicola Tribal Town.
Elisabeth Le Guin
As a cellist, founding member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Artaria String Quartet; in about 40 recordings on labels large and small. As an academic, author of Boccherini's Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology (2006) and The Tonadilla in Performance: Lyric Comedy in Enlightenment Spain (2014); recipient of grant support from the ACLS, the UC Presidents' Research Fund, the Institute for International Education (Fulbright program), UCLA's International Institute, and the UCHRI California Consortium.
Siv Lie
Siv B. Lie is a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology. She researches the cultural politics of jazz manouche, also known as Gypsy jazz, in France. Siv is particularly interested in the legacy of Django Reinhardt and representations of Manouche/Romani identities in jazz manouche practice. She is a founding member of the Initiative for Romani Music at NYU. Siv, an active violinist/violist, is Co-Director of Raklorom, NYU's Romani ensemble, and has also recorded her own work.
Scott V. Linford
Scott V. Linford is a doctoral candidate in Ethnomusicology at UCLA. His research approaches music as key feature of experiential senses of community, through fieldwork in West Africa, Central America, and the United States. An award-winning filmmaker and banjoist, Scott formerly served as Editor-in-Chief of Ethnomusicology Review and Director of the UCLA Bluegrass and Old Time Ensemble.
Mark Lomanno
Mark Lomanno--a Mellon Foundation/Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Swarthmore College--teaches courses in ethnomusicology, jazz, music of the African Diaspora, U.S. popular music, and Western European classical music. He currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Society for Ethnomusicology's Special Interest Group on Improvisation. Lomanno's research focuses on improvisation as both a musical and cultural process and its application in interdisciplinary, collaborative, and community-based scholarship and pedagogy.
Olivia Lucas
Olivia Lucas is a PhD candidate in music theory at Harvard University. She is currently completing dissertation fieldwork on extreme metal in Helsinki, Finland. She also researches the fringe movements of extreme metal in North America, and temporality and rhythm in a wide variety of musics.
Siriana Lundgren
Siriana is a third year PhD student whose research focuses on intersectional feminist critique of musicking throughout the American West. Her dissertation centers on the structures of power that surround musicking in the red-light districts of Rocky Mountain mining towns. Siriana is also dedicated to public scholarship and has curated digital exhibits on the life and legacy of Dr. Eileen Southern and race and gender in the American West.
Alexander Markovic
Alex Markovic received his M.A. in Anthropology in 2007, and is currently finishing his dissertation on identity politics and musical performance among Romani brass musicians in Vranje, Serbia, at the Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois-Chicago. With the support of an International Research Exchanges Board (IREX) IARO grant, among others, he spent a total of 19 months conducting fieldwork in Vranje on music, weddings, and ethnic identity. His research interests include music, dance, and ritual in the Balkans, ethnicity and nationalism, music, media, and globalization, and the anthropology of performance and ritual.
Alyssa Mathias
Alyssa Mathias is a PhD student in ethnomusicology at UCLA, where her research focuses on music of the Armenian diaspora. She received her MA from UCLA and a BA from the University of Chicago. A violinist and singer, Alyssa performs a wide variety of music from Europe and the Middle East. She was the Managing Editor for Volumes 18 and 19 of Ethnomusicology Review.
Kyle T. Mays
Kyle T. Mays (he/his) is an Afro-Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa) writer and scholar of US history, urban studies, race relations, and contemporary popular culture. He is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, and History at the University of California, Los Angeles.
James McNally
James McNally is a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan. He is currently researching the music of Carnival in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. His broader research interests include music and nationalism, identity, race, and religion in Brazil and the United States. Originally from Vermont, he received a BA in Music from Amherst College.
Elizabeth K. Neale
Elizabeth is a second year PhD candidate co-supervised at Cardiff University and the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter. She received her BA in music and English literature and MA in ethnomusicology from Cardiff University, and her project is supported through the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.
Ethnomusicology Review
This blog is for general news, notices, and thoughts from EMR editors.
Dean Reynolds
Dean Reynolds is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, where he is currently writing his dissertation on jazz musicians and listeners and their uses of recording technologies and new media. Dean has taught undergraduate music courses at City College, the New School, Princeton, and elsewhere, and he is a double bassist.
Alex W. Rodriguez
Alex W. Rodriguez is a writer, improviser, organizer, and trombonist. He received a PhD in Ethnomusicology from UCLA, where his research focused on jazz clubs around the world and the creative improvised music communities that sustain them. His writing has appeared in Down Beat, Lion's Roar, Jazz Perspectives, NPR Music, LA Weekly, and The Newark Star-Ledger.
Jeff Roy
Jeff Roy is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA, currently completing his dissertation on the music and dance practices of India's hijra (male-to-female transgender) communities. his work incorporates methodologies in documentary filmmaking, and engages theories in gender studies, performance studies and film studies. HIs work has been supported by fellowships from Fulbright-Hays, Fulbright-mtvU, Film Independent, the American Institute for Indian Studies, and the Society for Asian Music.
Dave Sanders
Dave Sanders is a graduate student of Jazz History and Research at Rutgers University. He is currently researching the use of blues aesthetics as analytical and conceptual tools under the direction of Lewis Porter. He holds a B.M. in Jazz Studies from Temple University.
Justin Schell
Justin Schell is a filmmaker, writer, photographer, and the Digital Humanities Specialist for the University of Minnesota Libraries. His first documentary, Travel in Spirals, tells the story of Hmong hip-hop artist Tou SaiKo Lee's journey back to Thailand, 30 years after he was born in a refugee camp there. He's in the final stages of post-production on my first-full length documentary, We Rock Long Distance, which weaves the story of Lee along with two other artists, M.anifest (originally from Ghana) and Maria Isa (born in St.
Eric J. Schmidt
Eric J. Schmidt is a PhD student in the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology. His primary research interests address music of the Sahara and Sahel regions of northwest Africa, particularly in Niger and Mali. He earned his MA from UCLA and his BA in Music (Jazz Studies) from American University, and has been a performer of Scottish highland bagpipe, saxophone, and ‘ud, among other instruments. Eric is currently Managing Editor for the Ethnomusicology Review Sounding Board.
Ryan Skinner
Ryan Thomas Skinner studies the local and global music cultures of contemporary Africa and its diasporas. His research addresses issues of popular culture, ethics, aesthetics, urbanism, public piety, cultural politics, nationalism, and the idea of Africa in the world today.
Darci Sprengel
Darci Sprengel is currently a PhD student in the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology. She received a BMA in viola performance and BA in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Michigan in 2010.
Otto Stuparitz
Otto Stuparitz is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research has focused on the meaning of value in musical contexts. His masters' paper considered the religious, economic, ethnic, and social value of Balinese gamelan gong kebyar and gender wayang pedagogies. His dissertation explores the history and contemporary practice of Indonesian jazz. Otto has been the editor of Ethnomusicology Review and is an active musician playing in various gamelan ensembles and styles, fusion projects, and intercultural improvisation ensembles.
Kaitlin E. Thomas
Kaitlin E. Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Norwich University. Her research delves into music in Latin America as a site for resistance and renegotiation.
Jonathan Thomas
Jonathan Thomas is a Ph.D. candidate at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (CRAL). His doctoral dissertation, supervised by Prof. Esteban Buch, focuses on the cultural history of political records in France during the 1930s.
Nolan Warden
Nolan Warden is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at UCLA. His dissertation focuses on traditional and popular music of the indigenous Wixaritari (Huichol people) of western Mexico. His other research focuses on ritual drumming of the African diaspora, a topic that led to an MA at Tufts University with a thesis on Afro-Cuban drumming ceremonies for the dead ("cajón pa' muerto"). Nolan also performs as a percussionist in many genres and has toured internationally as a member of La Pasión Según San Marcos by Osvaldo Golijov.
Kurt Werner
Kurt James Werner is a Ph.D. researcher at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His dissertation “Like an 808: Circuit Models and Analog Musicology of the TR-808, including Advances in Wave Digital Filter Theory” is aimed at recovering a holistic history of the Roland TR-808 drum machine.
Tom Wetmore
Tom Wetmore is a New York City-based pianist, composer, bandleader, producer, and PhD student in ethnomusicology at Columbia University. His research interests include jazz, US black music, race, labor, ownership/appropriation, tourism, improvisation, and electronic/computer music/sound. Visit his website at tomwetmore.com.
Dave Wilson
Dave Wilson is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research explores local folk, jazz, and popular music practices in the Republic of Macedonia. Active as a freelance saxophonist and composer in Los Angeles, he has performed and composed for television and film and toured around the world with pop and world music artists.
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Bette Yarbrough Cox (1921-2017) was a music educator in Los Angeles for more than 30 years, the founder of the BEEM (Black Experience as Expressed through Music) Foundation for the Advancement of Music, a Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of Los Angeles, and a...
On 3 June 2024, thirty-five students and three guardians from the Gugak National High School and the Gugak National Middle School in Korea visited the World Music Center at UCLA, including the Ethnomusicology Archive and the...
