(BA: New York University 1992, MA and MPhil, Columbia University) wrote her Masters thesis, "African Cuban Sacred Music in Performance: Felipe García Villamil and Grupo Emikeké of New York," on the relationship between ritual space and African Cuban liturgical music in the North American urban context. Her dissertation in progress is an exploration of a Haitian immigrant processional genre that serves to affirm shifting ethnic, religious and class identities in the Dominican Republic. It is entitled "Gaga in the Dominican Republic: The Construction of Identities through Performance." Her interests include ritual musics of the African diaspora and transnational musics in the context of migration within the Caribbean region, and Caribbean immigration to the United States.
mel23@ columbia . edu,
mlandies@ earthlink. net