My research focuses on creative practice in African and Afro-diasporic music, particularly in the context of popular music and new African diasporas in Europe and North America. I recently completed work on a book project about musical transformation, trauma healing, and migration in the lives of brass band and jazz musicians from Republic of Benin, West Africa, which will be published by University of Michigan Press in September 2023. Other current and developing research interests include ecomusicology, sensory studies, music and value, and the history of black American music, especially jazz and hip hop, in New York City.

I completed my PhD in ethnomusicology at Harvard University in 2017, and I also hold an MA in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University (2011), and a BM in jazz studies and a BA in English from Oberlin College and Conservatory (2007). Before coming to CCNY, I taught at the University of Florida, the University of Pittsburgh and Williams College. I perform actively as a jazz trombonist.

Current courses: Music 100 (Popular Music); Music 102 (Introduction to World Music)

Selected publications:

Transforming Vòdún: Musical Change and Postcolonial Healing in Benin's Jazz and Brass Band Music. (University of Michigan Press, 2023) https://press.umich.edu/Books/T/Transforming-Vodun2

"Virgin Forest and the 'Intrusion' of Gaia: ecomusicological questions, relational listening, and the music of Lionel Loueke of Benin," Sound Studies, 8(2):196-218 (2022). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20551940.2022.2095763?tab=p…

"Indexicality, Multiple Temporalities, and the Resonance in the Music of the Gangbe Brass Band of Benin," Ethnomusicology, 62(1):28-57 (2018). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/ethnomusicology.62.1.0028

"We Don't Want to Be Jazz-Jazz: Afro-Modernism, Jazz, and Brass Band Music in Benin," Jazz and Culture, 1:12-48 (2018). https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/jac/article-abstract/doi/…