Draft:Austin Okigbo

Austin C. Okigbo is an ethnomusicologist and Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado Boulder. His writings have appeared in The Journal of the International Library of African Music, Ethnomusicology, Africa Today, Du Bois Review, and Journal of Folklore Research. He is the editor of the 2015 World of Music on the New African Musical Diasporas.

He is serving as the director of the American Music Research Center (AMRC) at CU Boulder.

Education
He earned MA in music education from Westminster Choir College, where he accompanied with Joseph Flummerfelt and James Jordan, and completed performance tracks in vocal and choral conducting. He completed his PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington. Additionally, he holds degrees from the Pontifical Urban University in Rome in philosophy and theology.

Career
In Nigeria, South Africa, and the US, Okigbo has led church and community choirs as well as high school and university ensembles, including the Indiana Jacob School of Music's International Vocal Ensemble. In addition, he has worked as a gumboot dance choreographer for the Squonk Opera, His other areas of interest include xylophones, the Zimbabwean Shona marimba, and West African drumming.

He has studied the use of protest liturgy and religious music in the antiapartheid movements, church music as a forum for interaction between faith and culture in South Africa and Nigeria, and music and the global politics of HIV/AIDS. He is also involved in preserving cultural heritage, notably through projects such as Soundscapes of the People: A Musical Ethnography of Pueblo, Colorado, aims to document Pueblo's history through its musical traditions.

He is the author of "Music, Culture, and the Politics of Health: Ethnography of a South African AIDS Choir" and has published articles in journals such as Africa Today and Ethnomusicology.

Journals










External link

 * Austin Okigbo faculty homepage
 * Austin Okigbo publications indexed by Google Scholar