Ethnomusicology Ph.D. Program
Faculty :: Course Requirements :: Admissions
:: Completed Dissertations
The Graduate Center of The City University of
New York offers a dynamic doctoral program in ethnomusicology, drawing on
the rich resources of the Graduate Center, of the CUNY system, and of the
New York City area as a whole. Ethnomusicology graduate students at the
Graduate Center receive a thorough general background in the discipline,
while enjoying considerable latitude in pursuing their own interests in
accordance with the flexibility of the program and the diverse interests of
the ethnomusicology faculty.
A special attraction of the Graduate Center for
ethnomusicology students is its location in the heart of New York City, with
its extraordinarily rich musical and cultural life. Aside from being a
center for classical music, opera, and music theater, New York is also
renowned as the jazz capital of the world, and as the single biggest center
for Latin popular music. It is also host to a dazzling array of diverse
ethnic and immigrant communities, whose musical activities present unique
research as well as performance opportunities for ethnomusicologists.
Further, New York is home to such research institutions as the Schomberg
Center for Research in Black Culture, the YIVO Institute for Jewish
Research, and Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies.
Ethnomusicology students are able to work not only with
the Graduate Center's faculty, but also with other faculty throughout the
CUNY system, which includes several colleges with distinguished music
departments, such as Queens College, Hunter College, and Brooklyn College.
The breadth of these resources, together with the flexibility of the CUNY
program, the rich cultural offerings of New York City, and the affordability
of CUNY tuition, have enabled the ethnomusicology program to attract
students from a wide variety of countries and backgrounds. As of 2008, the
research interests of the approximately thirty students currently working in
the program cover large stretches of the globe, including Central Europe,
Brazil, Ladakh, India, Turkey, Kurdistan, Japan, Thailand, Cape Verde, North
and West Africa, Ireland, Cuba, and diverse aspects of North American
popular music. The Baisley Powell Elebash Endowment supports dissertation
and pre-dissertation research on the musical life of New York City. Our
faculty and alumni have made major contributions to the field and we have an
impressive record of placing our graduates in academic positions.
Students interested in applying to the Ethnomusicology Program at the
Graduate Center should feel free to contact Prof. Blum at
sblum@gc.cuny.edu
or Prof. Manuel at petermanuel3@aol.com.
Ethnomusicology Faculty
Ray Allen is Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the CUNY
Graduate Center. In addition he directs the American Studies Program and
serves as a Senior Associate at the Institute for Studies in American
Music. He is the author of Singing in the Spirit: African-American
Sacred Quartets in New York City, co-editor of Island Sounds in
the Global City: Caribbean Popular Music and Identity in New York,
and Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds: Innovation and Tradition in
Twentieth Century American Music.
Stephen Blum has published numerous essays and encyclopedia articles
on general topics (composition, improvisation, music analysis, modern music
history, cultural exchange) and on specific musical practices of Iran,
Kurdistan, Central Asia, Europe, and North America.
Barbara Hampton is a specialist in musics of Africa and the African
diaspora, musical aesthetics, and urban and feminist ethnomusicology; in
recent years she has co-authored African Musicology II, contributed
extensively to the Africa volume of the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music,
The United States Sacred Traditions (JVC/Smithsonian Folkways Anthology of
Music and Dance in the Americas), and edited Through African-Centered
Prisms. She is also Director of the Graduate M.A. Program in Ethnomusicology
at Hunter College.
Peter Hollerbach is Associate Professor of Music at Borough of
Manhattan Community College. Aside from directing his department's
Balinese gamelan ensemble, he is a specialist in jazz.
Peter Manuel has researched and published extensively on traditional
and contemporary musics of North India, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. His
books include Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India,
Popular Musics of the Non-Western World, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music
from Rumba to Reggae (with M. Largey and K. Bilby), East Indian Music in the
West Indies, and Essays on Cuban Music. A forthcoming book is Creolizing the
Contradance and Quadrille: Crucibles of Caribbean Music and Dance.
Jonathan Shannon, a specialist in the musics of Syria and
Andalusian North Africa, teaches anthropology at Hunter College. He is
the author of Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in
Contemporary Syria.
Jane Sugarman is a specialist in Eastern European music, gender
studies, and other topics. Her publications include Engendering Song:
Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings.
Other Music Department and Graduate Center faculty (selected)
Sean O’Donnell is a theorist specializing in twentieth-century music.
His research interests include set theory and analysis, transformational
networks and voice leading, metaphor theory, and popular music, particularly
rock and psychedelia.
Antoni Pizą, a specialist in the music of Spain, is currently the
Director of the Foundation for Iberian Music at the Barry S. Brook Center
for Music Research and Documentation of The Graduate Center (CUNY). His
interests include Spanish and Latin American music as well as biographical
studies and criticism. His publications include Cantatas de Antoni Literes:
El manuscrito de Guatemala (forthcoming 2008), and .Alan Lomax: Mirades
Miradas Glances.
Mark Spicer specializes in the reception history and analysis of
popular music. His writings on this subject have appeared, or are
forthcoming, in Contemporary Music Review, Music Theory Online,
twentieth-century music, and other scholarly journals, as well as three
essay collections. In addition to his scholarship and teaching, Prof. Spicer
maintains an active parallel career as a professional keyboardist and
vocalist, having worked with several groups in the US and the UK since the
1980s. He continues to take the stage most weekends with his own “electric
R&B” group, The Bernadettes.
Jeffrey Taylor specializes in music of the United States and jazz
history, and has taught courses on early jazz, jazz historiography, music in
the Harlem Renaissance, the history of jazz arranging, and the music of
Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus. He is
currently Director of the Institute for Studies in American Music (I.S.A.M.)
at Brooklyn College. As a pianist, Prof. Taylor focuses primarily on the
work of Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Earl Hines, and
other artists active from the 1910s-1930s.
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