I was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, and when I was ten I began to dedicate myself to the four instruments that I still consider my primary instruments: trumpet, guitar, voice, and piano. At that age, my family moved to Atlanta, GA where I was raised in the traditional music communities of Sacred Harp singing (pictured above), Old Time music, and Contradancing. These experiences put me in touch with ethnomusicologists and musicians studying diverse music genres from an early age, which would eventually lead me to complete a PhD in ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley in 2018.
My academic work broadly explores the political impacts of participatory festive practices in the Atlantic World. While the publications resulting from my research have become increasingly diverse, underlying them is an interest in understanding how communities transform traditional practices with an ethical aspiration to challenge the status quo.
With a background in Romance languages having completed a BA in French and Music at Reed College in 2007, I focused on music in Brazil for my doctoral dissertation, which is the basis of my book, Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro (Wesleyan University Press, 2022). Critical Brass focuses on the vibrant community of carnival brass bands in contemporary Rio de Janeiro that has come to view itself as an activist movement during a recent period of tremendous political crisis. I have published related research on brass bands in Brazilian protests in the Latin American Music Review (2020), the capitalist industries of carnival music classes in the Journal of Popular Music Studies (2019), the postnationalist aesthetics of Rio's carnival in the Luso-Brazilian Review (2019), and a comparison between the carnivals of Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans of race and aesthetics in Ethnomusicology (2021).
After my PhD, I returned academically to the American dance tradition in which I was raised with an article on gender subversion in contradance which was published in the Yearbook for Traditional Music (2019). I have also been involved in a series of collaborative projects as a co-editor of three books. HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism (Routledge 2020) focuses on the movements and festivals of the global network of alternative brass bands known as HONK! and includes my chapter on race and aesthetics the HONK! network. At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice (Indiana University Press 2023) combines traditional ethnographies and autoethnographies reflecting on a global range of studies about music and social justice. Most recently, I have begun working Festival Activism (Indiana UP 2023), which will present a diverse range of case studies examining the transformational potentials of festivals.
In 2020, I began a six-year postdoctoral position as an Integrated Researcher in the Instituto de Etnomusicologia-música e dança (INET-md) at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa through Portugal's annual competition, the Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus (CEEC), supported by the country's granting agency, the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). During the first year of this fellowship amidst the pandemic, I followed the global HONK! community as it went online in a co-authored publication in Music and Politics (2022), and I documented the campaign of carnival bands in Rio de Janeiro to convince revelers to stay at home in the Journal of Public Festivity (2021). I am now embarking on new research, including projects exploring disability in carnival, cultural infrastructure for immigrants in Lisbon, alternative brass bands in Portugal and Europe, and Brazilian musical traditions in Lisbon.
Beyond research, I have also organized conferences, including two meetings of the Northern California Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology as President of that organization (2020-22) and the international "Music of Carnival" conference (2021). At UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the Conservatory of Music and the University of the Pacific, I taught a wide range of courses, such as ethnomusicology courses including Carnival: Music and Subversion, Music in Brazil, Musics of the World, and Music in American Cultures, as well as other music courses, such as Western Music Survey, Musicianship, Music Theory, and Contemporary Music.
I have played in a wide range of styles and ensembles, including brass bands, jazz bands, contradance bands, Brazilian ensembles, early music choirs, Balkan brass bands, rock bands, shapenote groups, cumbia bands, and more. My most successful musical endeavor has been co-founding San Francisco's Mission Delirium Brass Band, which has toured to Brazil, France, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, and New Orleans. See the music page of this website for more.
My academic work broadly explores the political impacts of participatory festive practices in the Atlantic World. While the publications resulting from my research have become increasingly diverse, underlying them is an interest in understanding how communities transform traditional practices with an ethical aspiration to challenge the status quo.
With a background in Romance languages having completed a BA in French and Music at Reed College in 2007, I focused on music in Brazil for my doctoral dissertation, which is the basis of my book, Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro (Wesleyan University Press, 2022). Critical Brass focuses on the vibrant community of carnival brass bands in contemporary Rio de Janeiro that has come to view itself as an activist movement during a recent period of tremendous political crisis. I have published related research on brass bands in Brazilian protests in the Latin American Music Review (2020), the capitalist industries of carnival music classes in the Journal of Popular Music Studies (2019), the postnationalist aesthetics of Rio's carnival in the Luso-Brazilian Review (2019), and a comparison between the carnivals of Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans of race and aesthetics in Ethnomusicology (2021).
After my PhD, I returned academically to the American dance tradition in which I was raised with an article on gender subversion in contradance which was published in the Yearbook for Traditional Music (2019). I have also been involved in a series of collaborative projects as a co-editor of three books. HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism (Routledge 2020) focuses on the movements and festivals of the global network of alternative brass bands known as HONK! and includes my chapter on race and aesthetics the HONK! network. At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice (Indiana University Press 2023) combines traditional ethnographies and autoethnographies reflecting on a global range of studies about music and social justice. Most recently, I have begun working Festival Activism (Indiana UP 2023), which will present a diverse range of case studies examining the transformational potentials of festivals.
In 2020, I began a six-year postdoctoral position as an Integrated Researcher in the Instituto de Etnomusicologia-música e dança (INET-md) at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa through Portugal's annual competition, the Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus (CEEC), supported by the country's granting agency, the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). During the first year of this fellowship amidst the pandemic, I followed the global HONK! community as it went online in a co-authored publication in Music and Politics (2022), and I documented the campaign of carnival bands in Rio de Janeiro to convince revelers to stay at home in the Journal of Public Festivity (2021). I am now embarking on new research, including projects exploring disability in carnival, cultural infrastructure for immigrants in Lisbon, alternative brass bands in Portugal and Europe, and Brazilian musical traditions in Lisbon.
Beyond research, I have also organized conferences, including two meetings of the Northern California Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology as President of that organization (2020-22) and the international "Music of Carnival" conference (2021). At UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the Conservatory of Music and the University of the Pacific, I taught a wide range of courses, such as ethnomusicology courses including Carnival: Music and Subversion, Music in Brazil, Musics of the World, and Music in American Cultures, as well as other music courses, such as Western Music Survey, Musicianship, Music Theory, and Contemporary Music.
I have played in a wide range of styles and ensembles, including brass bands, jazz bands, contradance bands, Brazilian ensembles, early music choirs, Balkan brass bands, rock bands, shapenote groups, cumbia bands, and more. My most successful musical endeavor has been co-founding San Francisco's Mission Delirium Brass Band, which has toured to Brazil, France, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, and New Orleans. See the music page of this website for more.
