Education:

PhD, Music, Duke University, 2021

MA, Music, Duke University, 2019

BA, Anthropology, Duke University, 2005

Scholarly and Creative Interests

Jonathan is an ethnomusicologist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer. Jonathan’s academic research concerns how local musical traditions are transformed through recording studio practice and come to articulate new meaning in their international circulation. He has many years of experience studying music from the black Atlantic, from Brazil to Senegal to the US South. Jonathan is active as an artist and performer. Most recently he produced the album “Routes” for his band Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba. The album was recorded both in Senegal and North Carolina and garnered critical acclaim from Songlines, Afropop Worldwide, The Financial Times, and Robert Christgau for Vice, among others. Jonathan has written music for film and theater, including several summers runs with The Paperhand Puppet Intervention. He plays bass with Onyx Club Boys, and is a founding member of and contributor to varied projects including intermedia performance collective INVISIBLE, the protest marching band Cakalak Thunder, folk band Midtown Dickens, and the samba reggae bands Batalá Durham and Oxente. Jonathan has over a decade’s worth of music teaching experience at the secondary and post-secondary level. He holds PhD and MA in Music from Duke University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Guilford College.

Honors and Awards

  • Bass Connection Project Co-Leader: “Arts and the Anthropocene”. 2020-2021
  • Bass Instructional Fellowship, Instructor of Record (Declined). 2019-2020
  • James B. Duke International Research Fellowship. 2019
  • Research Grant from Association of Recorded Sound Collections. 2019
  • Duke Graduate Student Training Enhancement Grant. 2019, 2020
  • Duke Center for International and Global Studies Graduate Award for Research. 2017-2018
  • Duke Digital Humanities Lab Fellowship. 2017-2018

Exhibitions and Performances

ReVIEWING Black Mountain College 12 Conference. 2020. Asheville, NC. Presented participatory art installation, Anechoia Memoriam, with collaborator Mark Dixon. Anechoia Memoriam is a performance at the crossroads of John Cage’s notion of silence and the silences surrounding state killings of unarmed people of color. A seven-hour interactive performance designed for a typewriter that electromechanically controls an acoustic piano (The Selectric Piano), the score for Anechoia Memoriam is composed of 180 names of unarmed people of color killed by law enforcement in the United States. The piece is intended as a memorial and depends on the attention (or inattention) of listener-participants.

Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting. 2020. Ottawa, Canada (held virtually). Presented conference paper entitled “An Art Which Conceals Art: Record Production and the Politics of Invisibility in Toumani Diabaté’s Kaira.”

The South Central Graduate Music Consortium. 2020 Hosted by the University at Chapel Hill. Presented conference paper entitled “World Music Record Production and the Politics of Invisibility.”

British Forum for Ethnomusicology and Société française d’ethnomusicologie Joint Autumn Conference. 2019. Hosted at City University of London. Presented conference paper entitled “Producing Music, Producing History: Exploring the Archive Below the Surface of a Sound Recording.”

Annual Meeting of the Southeastern and Caribbean Chapter of the Society for
Ethnomusicology (SEMSEC). 2019. Hosted on the campus of Wake Forrest University. Presented conference paper entitled “Atlantic Cosmopolitanisms: Angélique Kidjo Reimagines Remain in Light.”

Performance and Labor in the Contemporary World. 2018. Hosted by Duke University Department of Cultural Anthropology. Presented conference paper entitled “Producing Music, Producing History: Exploring the Archive Below the Surface of a Sound Recording.”

Duke Music Department Colloquium Series. 2018. Presented talk entitled “Producing Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba’s Routes.”

Review of Louis Chude-Sokei’s The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics for Mark Anthony Neal’s New Black Man in Exile blog.

MUSIC COMPOSITION, PERFORMANCE and PRODUCTION

Recording and Production Credits:

2020 Diassing Jalikunda, Youssoupha Cissokho. Produced, engineered and mixed in M’Bour, Senegal, Diassing Jalikunda is a full-length album of griot korist Youssoupha Cissokho’s original compositions, recorded at his family compound with a mobile studio.

2019 Music from We Are Here, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Arranger, Producer; bass, piano, percussion.

2018 Routes, Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba. Produced album recorded both in North Carolina and Senegal. Coordinated 35 musicians, composed string quartet arrangements, played bass and percussion, directed recording sessions, wrote liner notes. Routes was favorably reviewed by Songlines, The Financial Times, Afropop Worldwide, Robert Christgau for Noisy/ Vice, Black Grooves and many others.

2017 Music from Of Wings and Feet, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Arranger, Producer, Engineer; bass, piano, percussion, guitar.

2014 The Great Peace, Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba. Arranger and Co-Producer; bass, percussion.

2014 Music from the Painted Bird, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Arranger, Producer, Engineer; bass, piano, percussion, guitar.

2013 PARO, Brice Randall Bickford. Bass, percussion.

2012 Resonance, Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba. Arranger, Co-Producer; bass, percussion, keyboards.

2012 Home, Midtown Dickens. Co-Arranger, Co-Producer; bass, percussion, piano, guitar.

2012 Solar Rapé, Carlos Timon. Bass, percussion.

2012 Misery Makes Odd Bedfellows, Jared Bartman. Bass.

2009 Lanterns, Midtown Dickens. Co-Arranger, Co-Producer; bass, percussion, piano, guitar.

2009 Rhythm 1001: Live at the Ackland Art Museum, Invisible. Composer, Performer.

2009 Irresponsibly Electric, Invisible. Composer, Engineer; bass, percussion, keyboards.

Multi-Channel Sound Installation and Performance:

2020 Landscapes. Captured field recordings at Grand Staircase Escalante (UT) for 5.1 surround mix of environmental sound score to accompany installation focused on the opening of the national park to oil and gas extraction. In collaboration with Merrill Shatzman and Raquel Salvatella de Prada.

2019 Dust of the Zulu, Rubenstein Arts Center Project Residency at Duke University. Composed score and designed sound for installation based on Prof. Louise Meintjes’ award-winning ethnography Dust of the Zulu: Ngoma Aesthetics After Apartheid (Duke Press 2017). Created collaborative exhibit with Prof. Meintjes, photographer TJ Lemon and others.

2018 Cornered, Rubenstein Arts Center Project Residency at Duke University. Composed and recorded original score for Raquel Salvatella de Prada’s video projection installation focusing on African migration to Europe.

2014 Time Constraints, collaboration with Mark Dixon. Co-Composer of 50-minute composition for electromechanical drum machine and percussion triggered by dripping water. Performances include: Duke University Nelson Music Room, Durham NC; UNC-A Ecomusicology Conference, Asheville NC; Telfair Museum, Savannah GA.

2011-2012 The New Obsolete, with Invisible. Co-Composer of 70-minute performance piece for typewriter-controlled piano, and electromechanical drums triggered by dripping water. Performances include: Moogfest, Asheville NC (2012); 1708 Gallery, Richmond VA (2012); Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro NC (2012); Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh NC (2012); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh NC (2012); UNC-G New Music Festival, Greensboro NC (2011); Reynolda House, Winston-Salem NC (2011).

Music for Film and Theater:

2020 Waiting for Q. Sound design and mix for 20-minute documentary short film focused on the online conspiracy theory, QAnon.

2020 Haw River Learning Celebration. Composed and recorded original score for six-part educational video series produced in collaboration with the Haw River Assembly.

2019 We Are Here, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Band Member, Music Director. Co-composed, arranged, directed and performed live score for popular outdoor theater performances. Directed 7-piece band. Performed 20-30 shows per season, seen by 10,000+ people. Each season’s production features a custom-composed score for 6-10 multi-instrumentalists and vocalist(s). UNC-CH Forest Theater and NC Museum of Art Amphitheater.

2017 Of Wings and Feet, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Band Member, Music Director. Co-composed, arranged, directed and performed live score for popular outdoor theater performances. Directed 7-piece band.

2014 Peace in Our Pockets, The Groove Productions. Composed and recorded original score for feature length film about the use of cellular technology in mobilizing voter participation and non-violence in the 2013 elections in Kenya.

2014 The Painted Bird, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Band Member, Music Director. Co-composed, arranged, directed and performed live score for popular outdoor theater performances. Directed 7-piece band.

2014 NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” Advertising Short. Composed cue for promotional video.

2012 City of Frogs, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Band Member. Co-composed, arranged, directed and performed live score for popular outdoor theater performances seen by 10,000+ people over course of run.

2012 Café Sense, Vittles Films. Composed and recorded original score.

2012 The New Obsolete, American New Wave. Composer for feature-length documentary.

2011 The Serpent’s Egg, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Band Member. Co-composed, arranged, directed and performed live score for popular outdoor theater performances seen by 10,000+ people over course of run.

2010 Islands Unknown, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Band Member. Co-composed, arranged, directed and performed live score for popular outdoor theater performances seen by 10,000+ people over course of run.

2009 Love and Robots, Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Composer, Band Member. Co-composed, arranged, directed and performed live score for popular outdoor theater performances seen by 10,000+ people over course of run.