Archiving Ethnomusicology: The American Folklife Center at 50 and the Future of Sound Stewardship

Chair(s): John Fenn (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)

Presenter(s): John Fenn (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress); Judith Gray (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress); Doug Peach (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress); Nancy Groce (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress); Andrea Decker (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)

Communities of Care in Academic and Applied Ethnomusicology

Chair(s): Angela Glaros (Eastern Illinois University); Anne Elise Thomas (Sweet Briar College)

Presenter(s): Angela Glaros (Eastern Illinois University); Colin Hochstetler (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); Jonathan Smith (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); Amber Clifford-Napoleone (University of Central Missouri); Julie Hunter (State University of New York, Potsdam); Anne Elise Thomas (Sweet Briar College)

Archive and Experimentation across Transnational Arab Cultural Geographies

Chair(s): Shayna Silverstein (Northwestern University)

Discussant(s): Anne Rasmussen (William & Mary College)

Presentations in the Session

Water as Archive: Tamara Al-Mashouk’s I’d search forever, I want to remember (2023)

Rim Irscheid (Kings College London)

Archival Play with the “Halim El Dabh Papers”

Shayna Silverstein (Northwestern University)

Market as Archive / Market as Method: Music and Materiality in Cairo’s Used Goods Markets

Sophie Frankford (Kings College London)

Mongolian Musical Practices as Ecological Mediation in Inner Mongolia

Yuwei Jing

Victoria University of Wellington

Neither Hani Heritage nor Global Grooves: Sonic Negotiations of Minority Identity in Yunnan’s Transnational Reggae Networks

Haotian Wang

Duke University

The Texture of Silence: Tracing the Blank History of African Soundscapes in China’s Urban Archive

TIANYU WANG

McGill University,

Music and the Invention of Ethnicities: Rethinking Ethnic Categories in the Ethnomusicological Study of Chinese Music

Kai Tang

University of Vienna

Singing imagined futures: Young people, musical arts, and forced displacement

Chair(s): David McDonald (Indiana University)

Discussant(s): David McDonald (Indiana University)

Presentations in the Session

Singing Our Stories: Musical arts and refugee children and young people in Canada

Andrea Emberly (York University)

Sounding Against Organized Abandonment: Refugee Arts Practice and the Limits of Witnessing

André de Quadros (Boston University)

Singing Agency into Being: Refugee Youth, Participatory Arts, and the Co-Creation of Knowledge

Nadeen Abu Shaban (York University)

“Quitate tú pa’ ponerme yo”: Clave Riddim, Salsa, and Puerto Rican Reggaetón Relations

Ana Maria Diaz Pinto, Juan Diego Diaz

University of California, Davis

Military Bands in Puerto Rico during World War I: Music as an Instrument of Imperial Power (1917-1919)

Jorge L. Mercado-Méndez

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

Sanctioning the Divided Musical Nationhood: Institutionalization of Music under ‘Muñozismo’ in Puerto Rico (1949–1965)

Rodney Padovani

University of California, Berkeley,

Concierto por radio: WKAQ, Musical Programming, and Canon Formation in 1920s Puerto Rico

Julian Duncan

Florida State University

The Soul of Whose Japan? The Rumor of Zainichi Korean as Imperial Trace

Jiyoon Auo

University of Pittsburgh

Sound and Religious Engagement in Contemporary Jōdo Shinshū

Danny Allen

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

From American Showbands to Uchinā Jazz: Reclaiming Jazz Music in Postwar Okinawa

Qifang Hu

University of Texas at Austin

Toward an Applied Ethnomusicology of Diasporic Health Promotion: Developing a Music-Based Wellness Program

Xia Jing

Bard College Conservatory of Music,

The Afterlives of Contemporary Worship, or Metamodern Musicking in the Shadow of Megachurches

Joshua Busman

University of North Carolina at Pembroke

“The War Changed Everything”: Reimagining Identity and Worship Songs in Ukraine

Robin Harris¹, Stephen Benham²

1: Dallas International University,; 2: Duquesne University

Sacred Sound Across Religious Boundaries: Carnatic Music in Kerala’s Christian Communities

George Pioustin

University of California, Los Angeles,

Why Suruí Christians Sing: Exploring a Post-secular Ethnomusicology in Brazil

Andrew Janzen

University of Toronto,

Voye Chante (Throwing/Sending Song): Ritual Frequencies for Resistance in Haitian Vodou

Collin Edouard

Yale University

Women Inheriting and Maturing the Bullerengue-voice in the Afro-Colombian Maroon Caribbean: Worlding, Epistemic Aurality, and Las Penas Alegres

Manuel Garcia-Orozco

Columbia University,

Defending Cuban Heritage in Sound and Stone: Reviving Colonial-Era Music and Architecture in Contemporary Havana

Aimee González

University of Florida

"Go Back and Get It": Sankofa, Jamaican Maroon Cultural Traditions, and Recovering Fugitive Histories

Tracey Stewart

Swarthmore College,

Owning Sound: Music and/as Property

Chair(s): Jim Sykes (University of Pennsylvania)

Discussant(s): Jim Sykes (University of Pennsylvania)

Presentations in the Session

Property and Patrimony: Indigenous Music and the Contours of In/alienability in Mexico

Chris Batterman Cháirez (University of California, Berkeley)

Contested Legacies: Alienation and Intergenerational Transfer in the Blues

Matthew Mendez (Stanford University)

Heritage Fever and the Sounds of Insurgency in a Decolonizing State

Michelle Bigenho (Colgate University); Henry Stobart (Royal Holloway University of London)

In-group and Expanded Understandings of Diverse Timbre Patterns

Chair(s): Eshantha Peiris (University of British Columbia)

Presentations in the Session

Listener Expectations of Recurring Timbres in Rap Lyrics and Drum Patterns in Ta Dhom Project’s “K-Rap”

Eshantha Peiris (University of British Columbia)

Comparing Two Experiences of Beat with Tanya Tagaq's "Ilunikavi"

Kristi Hardman (University of North Carolina at Charlotte)

Drumset Orchestration: Expanded and In-group Understandings of a Ubiquitous Concept

Jason Winikoff (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

Timbre-Enabled Conversation in Afro-Haitian Drumming

Lois Wilcken (La Troupe Makandal)

Allah Still Calls: Improvisation as Healing and Muslim Legibility in Post-9/11 African American Jazz

Ahmet Karagedik

Stony Brook University

Amiri Baraka’s “Advanced Workers” Funk Up the ‘77 Berliner Jazztage: Hearing the “Changing Same” of Black Music as a Constellation of Transnationalisms, Histories and Art Forms

Spencer Hadley

Cornell University

Patrice Rushen's Black Musical World-Making

Jonathan Gómez

University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance

Cyro Baptista's Musical Anthropophagy: Weighing the ethics of eclectic experimentalism for a Brazilian percussionist in New York’s downtown scene

Marc Gidal

Ramapo College of New Jersey

Innovative Approaches to Public Engagement in Ethnomusicology & Folklore

Chair(s): Heather Sloan (Archives of Traditional Music,)

Presenter(s): Robert McCormac (Indiana University); Yun-Kiu Lo (Indiana University); Jon Kay (Indiana University)

Música Urbana as Mediated History: The Role of Genre and Scholars in the Music of Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro

Chair(s): Juan Eduardo (Ed) Wolf (University of Oregon,)

Presentations in the Session

Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos is Applied Ethnomusicology

Rebecca Bodenheimer (Independent Scholar)

Plena as a Resilient, Mollifying yet Disruptive Resource in the Art World of Bad Bunny

Juan Eduardo Wolf (University of Oregon)

Reorganizing the Past: Archival Temporalities and Ethnomusicological Mediation in platform music industries

Hugo Viera-Vargas (Universidad Albizu)

AI Anti-ICE Protest Songs: Aesthetic and Sociopolitical Considerations

Noriko Manabe

Indiana University,

Resistance Music in Occupied Minneapolis

Colleen Bertsch

Minneapolis, MN

Refracted National Identity through “Island’s Sunrise”: Protest Music as Crafting—or Cracking—Taiwan

Darren Sheng-Hsuan Chuang

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Musical Representations of Indigeneities in Contemporary Japanese Anime

Chair(s): Brooke McCorkle Okazaki (Carleton College)

Presenter(s): Stacey Jocoy (Library of Congress); Thomas B. Yee (University of Texas San Antonio); Kunio Hara (University of South Carolina); Rose Bridges (Widener University)

“Condenó al ostracismo”: Contesting Histories of the Salon in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Trinity Lê

University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music

Chilena and Los Banqueros: Afro-Mexican Memory in a Motley Society

Abraham Landa

University of Oregon

Aural Convivencia: a Decolonial Aesthesis of Mexico City’s “Typical” Sounds

Tony Rasmussen

The University of Texas at Austin

Technologies of Witness: Recorded and Digital Sacred Music in American Life

Chair(s): Erol Köymen (Florida State University)

Discussant(s): Erol Köymen (Florida State University)

Presentations in the Session

Recording the Mission Field: The Musical Betts and their “Truckload of Instruments”

Austin Testerman (Florida State University)

The Blood Still Works: Gospel Sound Circulation on TikTok as Black Lived Theology

Anita Danielle Ingram (Yale University)

Sacred Music’s Technological Echoes: Examining Online Catholic Sacred Music Transmission and Re-Enchantment

Megan Hipp (Florida State University)

Musical Hustle: Performing “Africa” in China’s Theme Park Industry

Jonathan Wu

University of California, Berkeley

Sounding Steppe - (Re)Inventing the proto-Hungarian Music Today

Indira Hajnacs

Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe,

Jarring as Attunement: the Sound, Etiquette, and Risk in Taiwan Mountain Trail

Yu Hsuan Liao

Duke University,

Catching Tosca: Uncovering Technical Labor and Redefining Musicking in the Contemporary US Opera House

Megan Steigerwald Ille

College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati,

Sliding down the Sacred Harp-to-Contra Dance pipeline: the Affective Potential of Performance Arts

Christopher Hodges

Boston University

"I didn't feel valuable until I got a medal": Barbershop Singing and Stepping Outside of Neoliberal Success Narratives

Holly Parker¹, Aurelie Gandour²

1: University of Lincoln; 2: University of London

Sounding Authority in Yorùbá Indigenous Christianity: Music, Leadership and Worship

Abayomi Oni

University of Lagos, Nigeria

Groans, Shouts, and Sacred Resonance: Sound-Triggered Practices in African Worship Contexts

Divine Gbagbo

Loyola Marymount University,

The Ambivalence of Literal Decolonization Approaches in Sacred Music: A Case Study of Gregorian Chanting in the Holy Cross Catholic Church of Kenya

Jane Akenga

University of Texas at Austin,

Building Sound Pedagogies for Collaboration across Boundaries in Music Education

Chair(s): Logan Clark (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings,)

Presenter(s): Jennifer Mellizo (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings); Marcia Ostashewski (Cape Breton University); Jody Stark (University of Manitoba); Leim Joe (N/A); Starr Paul (Cape Breton University); Julian Kytasty (N/A)

Answering to Whom? Addressivity and the Creative Act in the Causasus and Central Asia

Chair(s): Richard Wolf (Harvard University,)

Presentations in the Session

Musical Polyaddressivity in Late Soviet Central Asian Cinema

Katherine Freeze Wolf (Independent)

Voice, Vocal Timbre, and Addressivity in Creativity of Azerbaijani Musicians

Polina Dessiatnitchenko (SOAS University of London)

Responding to the self: Qurbonsho’s Wakhi poetry in Tajikistan

Richard Wolf (Harvard University)

Intimate Community Building: Women Making Music Communities Across Asia and Its Diasporas

Chair(s): Sarah Morelli (University of Denver)

Presentations in the Session

Work before Practice: Women, Intimate Moments, and Embodiment in North Indian Art Music

Caroline Rohm (University of Texas, Austin)

Intimate Publics in the Moral Economy of K-pop

Stephanie Choi (University of Colorado Boulder)

Skin in the Game: Taiko Drum Makers in Arizona

Kate Alexander (University of Arizona)

Founding Mothers of Ethnomusicology: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Chair(s): Deborah Wong (University of California, Riverside, emerita)

Presenter(s): Charlotte Frisbie (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, emerita); Ellen Koskoff (Eastman School of Music, emerita); Allie Martin (Dartmouth University); Lei X. Ouyang (Swarthmore College); Stephanie Shonekan (University of Maryland)

Lyrics in Contention: Song, Power, and Identity in Latin America

Chair(s): Sean Bellaviti (Toronto Metropolitan University)

Presentations in the Session

Lyrical Insults and Collective Fun: The Social Dynamics of Carnival in a Panamanian Town

Sean Bellaviti (Toronto Metropolitan University)

México Canta y la Apología del Delito: Music, Authority, and the Idea of Justice

León F. García Corona (University of Southern California)

Buscando Al Caballo: Song Lyrics and the Conjuring of Dominican Identity

Heather Sloan (Indiana University Bloomington)

Whose Instrument? The Banjo, Blackness, and the Politics of Cultural Recovery

Chair(s): Joe Z. Johnson (Indiana University, Bloomington,)

Presentations in the Session

What Makes an Early Banjo?

Kristina Gaddy (University of Nottingham)

Alien Music: Hauntology and Temporal Disruption in Contemporary Black Banjo Performance

Jake Blount (Brown University)

Classic Style, Personal Collections, and the Pittsburgh Banjo Scene

Maya Brown-Boateng (University of Pittsburgh)

Defining 'Black Banjo': Toward Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Joe Z. Johnson (Indiana University, Bloomington)

The (De)Growth of Music

Chair(s): Oliver Shao (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Presentations in the Session

Music, Real Abstraction, and Growth: A Monster Story

Brian Barone (Berklee College of Music)

Sounds of Enough: Toward a Degrowth Ethnomusicology

Oliver Shao (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Songwriting (Re)Productive Labor in Veracruz's Sotavento

Ida Tello (Washington University in St. Louis)

Spreading St. Louis Jazz Values to “Postfigure” a Different Future

Esther Viola Kurtz (Washington University in St. Louis)

Reclaiming the Public: Listening Out in All-Women and Gender-Expansive HONK! Street Bands

Erin Allen

Ohio State University

Vendedores Ambulantes: Their Lives and Labor Embedded Within the Soundscape of Capital

Gia Dreyer

CUNY: Hunter College

“A Tale of Two Protests”: Soundscapes of Urban Immigration Rights Shared-Care Spaces in Cincinnati, Ohio 2025–2026

Kristy Swift

University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music

(Dis)Locating Masculinities in the New York Jazz Scene

Maurice Restrepo

The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY),

Echoes After Empire: Sound Archives and the Post-Imperial Nation-State

Chair(s): Caio de Souza (Universidade do Estado do Amapá,)

Discussant(s): Eduardo Sato (Virginia Tech)

Presentations in the Session

Sonic Transductions: Revisiting Lorenzo Dow Turner’s Radioscape in Bahia (1940-1941)

Caio de Souza (Universidade do Estado do Amapá)

Making Archives Musical, Making War Historical: Popular Song, Archival Violence, and Other Constructed Histories In and Against Sikh Militancy

Davindar Singh (Harvard University)

Nostalgic Collages: Archival Projects of Critical Radiophonic Utopianism

Adriane Pontecorvo (Indiana University)

Beyond Identity Politics: Rethinking Music, Selfhood, and Sonic Ontology in African Musics

Chair(s): Josh Brew (University of Virginia)

Presentations in the Session

Beyond the Living: Toward a Spectral Theory of the Musical Individual.

Alaba Ilesanmi (University of Minnesota)

Transcending Anthropocentrism in Musical Sustainability

Josh Brew (University of Virginia)

Is there even Ghanaian Afrobeats?

Kingsley K. Okyere (University of Pennsylvania)

"Religioso": Sonic morphologies as identity construction in Ghanaian art music

Matthew Eshun (Stanford University)

Festivalization of Devotional Music in India

Mukesh Kulriya

UCLA

Milk in Marathi Musics: From the Mother of the Gods to the “Tigress” of Education

Achintya Prahlad

Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge

“Listening to the Sarangi in a House of Music (Gharana)”

Suhail Yusuf

University of California Santa Cruz

Sonic Imaginations of the Nation: An Analysis of the Politics and Poetics of the Powada (Ballad) in Maharashtra, India

Avanti Chhatre

Department of Anthropology, Indiana University Bloomington

Multi-Sited Ethnography: Promises and Perils, Politics and Poetics

Chair(s): ken tianyuan Ge (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,)

Presentations in the Session

“Following the Jazz”: Stories from Improvised Music Scenes of Three Continents

Jenna Przybysz (Stanford University)

Taking Elsewhere on the Road: Laylit and the SWANA Dance Party

Michael Figueroa (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,)

Beyond Homeland/Diaspora: Listening Archipelagically Across Filipino/American Jazz Scenes

Noah Rosen (Columbia University)

Scale, Affect, Infrastructure: Keywords for Musical Labor in the Global Cruise Industry, Provocations for a Multi-Situated Economic Ethnomusicology

ken tianyuan Ge (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,)

Khap of the Tai Dam: Timbre, Language Sounds, and the Vocable

John Latartara

The University of Mississippi

Practice, Performance, and Repetition: Vocal Training and Attunement of the Senses in a Buddhist Ordination Ritual

Katherine Scahill

University of Pennsylvania

Ornamentation in Thai SATB Repertoire

Micah Mooney

University of Michigan

Booing the Thai Royal Anthem: Contesting National Identities in Contemporary Thailand

Chutikan Chaikittiwatana

Stony Brook University

Refusing ‘Plague Logic:’ Sonic Mundanity and Affective Care in Bristol's Trans+ Drag Scene

Sarah Cooper

University of Bristol

Parenthood and (Music) Academia. A Rantflection about Institutional Structures

Natalia Neira Nieto, Juno Leopoldina Gómez Neira

Harvard University,

Reducing HIV-stigma through music, dance, and theatre: An action research approach

NANETTE DE JONG^1,2,3, Matesu DUBE^1,2,3, Blessing Garamumhango^1,2,3, Steve Humble^1,3,4

1: Conceptualisation; 2: Data curation; 3: Formal Analysis; 4: Validation

Up to Code: Interrogating Fatphobia in AmericanYoung Artist Programs’ Audition “Uniforms”

Anna Valcour

Brandeis University

Intersectional Disruptions: Interrogating Hegemonic Understandings of Musical Talent/Musicality through Disability, d/Deafness, and Race/Ethnicity

Chair(s): Alexandria Carrico (University of South Carolina,)

Presenter(s): Alexandria Carrico (University of South Carolina); Katelyn Best (West Virginia University); Briana Nave (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill); Lindsay Wright (Yale University)

Critical Trans Ethnographies of Music and Sound

Chair(s): Anton Blackburn (Duke University)

Presentations in the Session

Liberia’s Daughters: The Legacies of “Women Working as Women” in San Diego/Tijuana

Alejandrina M. Medina (University of California, San Diego)

Tr/animal Voices at the Furry Convention

Juniper Clark (University of Pennsylvania)

“So Many Women Are Boring:” Ordinary Auralities in East London

Anton L. Blackburn (Duke University)

Voicing against Voicelessness: An Ethnomusicology of Voice through Rupture

Chair(s): Bradley DeMatteo (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill,)

Discussant(s): Joshua Pilzer (University of Toronto)

Presentations in the Session

Sounding the “Blank Slate”: Examining the Roles and Ramifications of the Refugee Child’s Voice in Cold War Propaganda

Elisa Alfonso (University of Utah)

Voicing Long-Term Refuge in Cambodian American Lowell, Massachusetts

Bradley DeMatteo (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

A Vocal Politics of Empathy in Palestinian Personal Narrative Storytelling

Hanna Salmon (Austin Community College)

Suspending Asian/American Listening

Chair(s): Allan Zheng (Loyola Marymount University)

Presenter(s): Aydin Quach (University of Southern California); Alissa Liu (University of California San Diego); Chun Chia Tai (Independent Scholar); Nic Vigilante (Cornell University); Heidi Tai (University of California San Diego)

Shame on the Field: How Shame Shapes Field Experiences

Chair(s): Ryan Lambe (Eckerd College)

Presenter(s): Ryan Lambe (Eckerd College); Lisa Beebe (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater); Nicol Hammond (University of California, Santa Cruz); Lydia Barrett (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Sounding Sacred Order: Gender, Boundary, and Choral Performance in the Celestial Church of Christ, Nigeria

Damilola Odebiyi

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

Dances of Empire: Dance and Power on the Nineteenth Century Omani East African Coast

Bradford Garvey

Brandeis University

Sounding the Dead: The Tulod-Damag Mortuary Rite of Central Panay, Philippines

Francis Penaranda

Univeristy of the Philippines College of Music

Listening to Medical(ized) Spaces: Sound, Care, and Clinical Ethics

Chair(s): Diandian Zeng (UC Santa Barbara); Gabrielle Hooper (Princeton University)

Presentations in the Session

Table of Phonetic Wounds

YuHao Chen (University of Notre Dame)

Negotiating an Alternate Aliveness on the Mayo Clinic’s Rochester Carillon

Meghan Wysocki (University of Michigan)

Sonic Care and Maternal Well-Being in Ibadan, Nigeria: Musical Practices in Faith-Based and Government Antenatal Clinics

Francis Eniola (Olabisi Onabanjo University)

Acoustic Architectures of Justice: Sound, Power, and the Courtroom

Melanie Moseley

University of Pittsburgh,

A Multimodal Ethnography of Displaced Karen Refugees at the Thai-Burmese Border

Jiaxi Xie

Goldsmiths, University of London

Aesthetics and Production in Los Angeles: A Global “New Music” Field of Cultural Production

Alec Norkey

UCLA

Black Women’s Songs of Migration: Reinforcing the Collective Authority of Cantadoras in Cali, Colombia

Kumera Zekarias Genet

Boston University

Sounds of Fuerza: Espiritismo Marialioncero and Venezuela’s Contemporary Crisis

Vicky Mogollón Montagne

Boston University

ARMORIAL MEMORY: INSURGENT CITIZENSHIP AND THE RESIGNIFICATION OF SPACES

Rafael Torralvo

Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany

Frum Women Sing: Voice, Agency, and Orthodox Jewish Subjectivity

Devorah Belin

CUNY Graduate Center

Portable, Iridescent Heritage: Liturgical Musicking of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in Montreal

Miranda Crowdus

Concordia University,

Mediated Mourning on a Global Stage: Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest, 2024–2025

Raphael Reis Medeiros de Campos

Independent Researcher, Brazil

“This Is Dingqu”: Remixing Ding Zhen into Dissent on Bilibili

ZIXUAN WANG

The University of Texas at Austin

Alhaji Beats: Afrobeats and the Mediation of African Muslim Identity within the Global Popular Music Market

Joshua Kerobo

University of Michigan

Alternative by Accident: WhatsApp, Music Circulation, and the Margins of Platform Capitalism in Equatorial Guinea

Pablo Infante-Amate

University of Jaén (Spain),

Barulho and Belonging: Noise, Tradition, and Creolized Auralities in Mindelo

Martin Ringsmut

University of Vienna,

Hidden in Plain Earshot: Examining Covert Racializing Discourses at Work in Metal Music

Meghan Creek

Minneapolis, MN

"Closer to God": Nine Inch Nails and the Popular Allure of the Abject

Julia Peters

University of Pennsylvania,