Biography:
I have a wide range of interests that extend from the late 19th century up to the present day, with a particular focus on popular and experimental traditions. Informed by ecological thinking, I use music to understand defining aspects of our contemporary world – from the poetics of nostalgia and racial belonging to fascist ideology, democracy, digital culture, and self-expression. My first book The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination is forthcoming in 2021 with University of California Press.
I completed my PhD at King's College Cambridge in 2015, funded by the AHRC. Before this, I studied at York (MRes) and Oxford (BA), where I received the Gibbs Prize. Prior to taking up a Junior Research Fellowship in 2017, I spent a year lecturing at Cambridge and received the Faculty of Music’s Teaching Prize. In 2021 I will be a Fellow at Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study.
Colleges, Departments and Institutes
Key Publications
Books
- The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021), forthcoming.
- Remixing Music Studies: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Cook, ed. Ananay Aguilar, Ross Cole, Matthew Pritchard, and Eric Clarke (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020).
Journal Articles
- 'Disciplined Melancholy: An Essay on the Songs of Leonard Cohen.' Songwriting Studies Journal (forthcoming 2021).
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'Popular Song and the Poetics of Experience.' Journal of the Royal Musical Association (forthcoming 2021).
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'The Problem with AI Music: Song and Cyborg Creativity in the Digital Age.' Popular Music, 39/2 (2020): 332–338.
- 'Vaporwave a e s t h e t i c s: Internet Nostalgia and the Utopian Impulse.' ASAP/Journal, 5/2 (2020): 297–326.
- 'On the Politics of Folk Song Theory in Edwardian England.' Ethnomusicology, 63/1 (2019): 19–42.
- 'Vernacular Song and the Folkloric Imagination at the Fin de Siècle.' 19th-Century Music, 42/2 (2018): 73–95.
- 'Notes on Troubling "the Popular".' Popular Music, 37/3 (2018): 392–414.
- 'Mastery and Masquerade in the Transatlantic Blues Revival.' Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 143/1 (2018): 173–210.
- 'Industrial Balladry, Mass Culture, and the Politics of Realism in Cold War Britain.' Journal of Musicology, 34/3 (2017): 354–390.
- '"Sound Effects (O.K., Music)": Steve Reich and the Visual Arts in New York City, 1966–68.' Twentieth-Century Music, 11/2 (2014): 217–244.
- '"Fun, Yes, but Music?" Steve Reich and the San Francisco Bay Area’s Cultural Nexus, 1962–65.' Journal of the Society for American Music, 6/3 (2012): 315–348.
Book Chapters
- 'Stravinsky, Modernism, and Mass Culture.' In Stravinsky in Context, ed. Graham Griffiths (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020): 230–237.
- 'Towards an Ecological History of Music.' In Remixing Music Studies, ed. Ananay Aguilar, Ross Cole, Matthew Pritchard, and Eric Clarke (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020): 194–209.
- ‘Introduction: A Hedgehog in Fox’s Clothing’ (with Pritchard and Aguilar). In Remixing Music Studies, 1–15.
- '"Join that Troubled Chorus": Nick Cave, the Bad Seeds, and the Blues.' In Mute Records: Artists, Business, History, ed. Zuleika Beaven, Marcus O’Dair, and Richard Osborne (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019): 87–99.
Public Reports
- ‘Living Archives and Creative Engagement Online: An EIRA-funded Report on Digital Interactivity in the Performing Arts’ (with Professor George McKay).
Other Publications
- Book review: 'Rethinking Reich edited by Sumanth Gopinath and Pwyll ap Siôn.' Music & Letters, 101/2 (2020): 383–85.
- 'Musical Plagiarism: Why it can be Admirable to Steal.' The Conversation, 4 May 2020.
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‘Turning Trash into Mantras: An Interview with Vaporwave Producer Strawberry Illuminati.’ ASAP/J online feature, 9 January 2020.
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‘Folk Music and Fascism: A Divisive History.’ Musicology Now, 19 February 2019.
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‘Who are the General Rippers of Higher Education?’ Times Higher Education, 19 November 2018.
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‘The Threat of the Popular.’ Faculty of Music Research Blog, University of Cambridge, 19 October 2018.
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Book review: ‘Popular Music Matters: Essays in Honour of Simon Frith edited by Lee Marshall and Dave Laing.’ Music & Letters, 97/3 (2016): 532–34.
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Book review: ‘Pioneers of the Blues Revival by Steve Cushing.’ Music & Letters, 96/4 (2015): 679–81.
