Students in the Ethnomusicology Program
Aiken, Katie
July 23, 2009 by KatieAiken
Bickford, Tyler
July 25, 2008 by tbickford
Tyler Bickford (MA 2006, MPhil 2007 in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University; BA 2001 with concentrations in Music and Modern Studies from Simon's Rock College). My dissertation is a study of the media consumption and expressive practices of children at a rural New England school. Recent writing examines children sharing the earbuds of their portable music devices [link]. My article about the phonetics and phonology of singing in a performance by Bob Dylan, "Music of Poetry and Poetry of Song: Expressivity and Grammar in Vocal Performance" [link] appeared in Ethnomusicology (51/3) in 2007. I have presented research on childhood, media, karaoke, and musical linguistics at meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the Consumer Studies Research Network, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (US Branch), and the Humanities and Technology Association. My book reviews appear in Current Musicology, the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, and the Journal of Folklore Research. I have also served as Editor-in-Chief of Current Musicology. My writing and a CV can be found here.
Calle, Simon
July 25, 2008 by scalle
(B.A. History, Universidad Javeriana; M.A. Ethnomusicology, Columbia University) He is interested in avant-garde and experimental musics, jazz within intercultural and transnational contexts, independent music scenes, and Afro-Colombian music. For ten years he has been a jazz and world music programmer for non-commercial radio stations in Bogotá, Colombia.Email: sc2527@columbia.edu
Carr, Daphne
July 25, 2008 by dcarr
(B.A. Journalism/Music History from New York University, 2001, M.A. Ethnomusicology 2008) Daphne is currently in the field conducting research for a dissertation on the production and circulation of recorded media among four cohorts (1968-present) of Czech popular musicians. Her prior work has been with art-school trained popular musicians in New York City, noise musicians in Providence, RI, and disco polo fans in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She is the student chair of IASPM-US and the assistant editor of Current Musicology. Email: dcg2105@columbia.eduGonzalez, Melissa
July 25, 2008 by MelissaGonzalez
(A.B. magna cum laude from Barnard College, in 2000 with a major in
Ethnomusicology; M.A. in Music from Columbia University, 2003). In her
Master’s Thesis, Welcome to the Thunderdome: Socio-Musical Conflict and the Search for Respect in the New York City Latin Jazz Scene, Melissa
examines how conflict is represented and articulated in musical style
and performance practice. Through an analytical examination of the
production of genre ideology from multiple perspectives, she argued
that musical genre, as a communicative field of action associated with
recurrent discourses and practices, is a useful conceptual framework
that uncovers the particular ways in which Latin jazz musicians situate
themselves in the scene politically, socially, and creatively. She
presented a paper based on this research at the 2005 national meetings
of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Melissa’s current research
interests include music and cultural policy, intellectual property,
genre theory, popular music studies, and the musics of Latin America
and the Latin American diaspora. She is a Columbia Teaching Fellow and
has received predoctoral fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the
Social Science Research Council, and the Ford Foundation. She is
currently developing a dissertation project on the simultaneous
commercialization and folklorization of Panamanian música típica.
Melissa’s dissertation research is being supported by a Columbia
University GSAS Travel Fellowship, an SSRC-Mellon Predoctoral Research
Grant, a field research grant from the Institute of Latin American
Studies, and a Ford Foundation Dissertation Writing Fellowship.
Email: mg293@columbia.edu
Hemmasi, Farzaneh
October 11, 2007 by fhemmasi
(BA in History from Oberlin 1997; MA in Ethnomusicology, Columbia, 2002) is studying the musics of Iran and Central Asia, as well as pop, electronic music, and dance club culture. Her MA thesis on a Brooklyn dance party scene called "Bang the Party" was entitled "BTP: Parties, Participants, and Practices." She presented a paper based on this work at the 2003 national meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology, and has an article forthcoming in the journal Popular Music based on the this research entitled “Dancing through Difference at a House Music Party.” Her current interests focus on music and media of Iran and the Iranian diaspora in the United States, a topic she pursued on a trip to Iran in the summer of 2004. Work based on this research will be presented at both the 2004 Society of Ethnomusicology National Conference and the American Anthropological Association meetings in November 2004. She is a Columbia Teaching Fellow (2001-present) and a Columbia University Hutner Fellow (2003-4), and has received a Columbia University Summer Travel Funding (Summer 2004), NYU Kevorkian Center tuition grant, and was awarded a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship for the study of Persian (2003).Email: fh2008@columbia.edu
Higgins, Niko
July 25, 2008 by nhiggins
(B.A. Wesleyan University, 1997; M.A. Columbia University, 2003) is an
alto saxophonist who composes his own music and leads the Niko Higgins
Ensemble. His first recording is due out on Engine Studios (www.engine-studios.com)
in December, 2003. In addition to jazz and free jazz, Higgins has
extensively studied South Indian classical music at Wesleyan University
and studied studied Karnatic vocal music in Chennai, India on a 1997-98
Fulbright Fellowship. . He is currently doing graduate work in
Ethnomusicology at Columbia University. . His MA thesis, "Improvisers
Unite: Jump Arts, Free Jazz Improvisation, and Practice Theory,"
discusses free jazz interaction through his research on a New York City
organization, "Jump Arts." He presented a paper based on this research
at the 2003 national meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
Presently in his third year at Columbia, he is formulating a
dissertation project on improvisation.
Email: nah2002@columbia.edu
Karl, Brian
July 25, 2008 by bkarl
has more than ten years of experience as a writer, editor, producer, and curator, specializing in new media including video, audio, and computer-based work. He has served as Executive Director, Program Director, and Artistic Director at many non-profit arts organizations, including Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Harvestworks Media Arts, Inc., and the Headlands Center for the Arts. While Editor of Tellus, the Audio Magazine, he was producer for several compact disc compilation recordings of experimental music and sound art. As a musician, he has performed his own and others' works at numerous venues including the Knitting Factory, CBGB?s, Merkin Hall, and Roulette in New York City. His work as a media artist (videomaker as well as sound designer for video and live performance) has appeared in the Whitney Biennial (2002) and the New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center (2002); has been purchased for the collection of the Jewish Museum (2001) in New York City; and won First Prize at the Leggera Film Festival in Italy (2000) as well as a Golden Gate Award Certificate of Merit at the San Francisco International Film Festival (2002). His Master's Thesis (2002) for the Ethnomusicology Program at Columbia University's was titled "Creation and Maintenance of Cultural Identity by Palestinian Musicians in New York City." As well as music of the Middle East, he also specializes in translocal popular musics and their various mediations.Email: bbk41@columbia.edu
King, Jonathan Tobias (Toby)
July 25, 2008 by tking
(BA in Geology, with additional concentration in Medieval and Renaissance English literature, from Amherst 1994; MS in Geology from the University of Montana in Missoula 1997; MA in Music Theory from Columbia 2000 with emphasis on music cognition, musical genres, and interpretive improvisation) is currently, he is working toward his MPhil in ethnomusicology and is conducting research on musical communication and genre-formation within bluegrass and country music performance communities in New York City. For the past two years, he has been the teaching assistant for the Center for Ethnomusicology. When not troubleshooting computer networks or doing fieldwork, he can generally be found practicing the banjo.Email: jk560@columbia.edu
Mangin, Timothy R.
July 25, 2008 by tmangin
(BA in music from Bowdoin; two years of MFA studies in world music and jazz at Cal-Arts; Certificate in African Studies from the Institute for African Studies at Columbia; MA and MPhil in Ethnomusicology from Columbia) wrote his MA thesis on "Giant Step: Innovation, Technology and Performance in a Jazz Inspired Dance Club" which examines the appropriation of a jazz ideology in an underground New York hip hop club.. He is currently writing a dissertation entitled "Senegalese Urban Popular Music: Jazz, Mbalax, and Rap" based on fieldwork in Senegal supported by the Ford Foundation, and holds a pre-doctoral writing fellowship at Saint Lawrence University. His academic service included research on the Malcolm X project at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia. He was also a pre-doctoral fellow in the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on Globalizing City Cultures at the Center for Comparative Literature and Society and participates frequently in the activities of the Center for Jazz Studies. His review of the CD "Keepers of the Talking Drum" appeared on Ethnomusicology Online (EOL). He presented a paper based on his research in Senegal at the 2003 national meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology.Email: trm8@columbia.edu
Newland, Martha (Marti)
July 25, 2008 by mnewland
(M.A, African American Studies, Columbia University; Certificate of Graduate Study, Musicology, Duke University; B.A. African American Studies, high honors, Oberlin College; B.M. Voice Performance, Oberlin Conservatory of Music). Marti's research focuses on singing, race and repertoire in the United States. Her current ethnographic work investigates how Japanese Americans construct a black vocal aesthetic through singing spirituals in Harlem. Marti won the Langston Hughes Thesis Award for the Humanities for her M.A. thesis titled "Concert Spirituals' Minstrel Inheritance." She has served as adjunct faculty at the Seton Hall University Department of Art and Music. Her publications include entries in the African American National Biography (Oxford University Press), the Encyclopedia of African American Music (Greenwood Press), Souls Journal (Taylor and Francis) and the Mellon Minority Undergraduate Research Journal.Search
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