At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice

Brenda M. Romero is Professor Emerita at the University of Colorado Boulder. She earned a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a bachelor of music and a master of music in music theory and composition from the University of New Mexico. In addition to extensive research in New Mexico, she has conducted fieldwork in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, including as Fulbright Scholar in Mexico in Colombia.

Susan M. Asai is Professor Emerita at the Music Department at Northeastern University in Boston. Her research encompasses Japanese folk performing arts and Asian American music and cultural politics. She has published numerous articles and encyclopedia entries on Japanese/Asian American music and identity. Asai's is author of Nomai Dance Drama: A Surviving Spirit of Medieval Japan.

David A. McDonald is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Since 2002 he has worked closely with Palestinian refugee communities in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and North America researching the performative dynamics of trauma, violence, and masculinity. He is author and editor of two books, My Voice is My Weapon and Palestinian Music and Song.

Andrew G. Snyder is an Integrated Researcher in the Instituto de Etnomusicologia at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal. He has written about alternative brass band movements in Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, and San Francisco in his book, Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro, his co-edited volume HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism, and in various articles.

Katelyn E. Best is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Musicology at West Virginia University and Co-Director of the Society for Ethnomusicology Orchestra. Her research focuses on Deaf music, hip hop, and cultural activism. Her current work traces the development of dip hop (sign language rap) in the United States and examines socio-cultural mechanisms that have historically colonized deaf experiences of music.