Jesse Ruskin

• Ph.D., Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles (2013)
• Master of Arts, Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles (2006)
• Bachelor of Arts, Sociology, minor in Music, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts (1996)

• African Studies Association
• Society for Ethnomusicology

Selected Fellowships and Awards

• 2013 Doctoral Hooding Student Marshal Nominee, UCLA
• 2011 Clifton Webb Scholarship, UCLA
• 2010, Elaine Krown Klein Fine Arts Scholarship
• 2009 Institute of American Cultures Research Grant, Bunche Center for African
• American Studies, UCLA
• 2008 International Institute Fieldwork Fellowship, dissertation project grant, UCLA
• 2007 Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad Fellowship for Intensive Advanced Yorùbá in Nigeria, University of Florida, Gainesville

Selected Conference Papers and Invited Lectures

• 2019, Panelist, “Global Field Recordings: A Publishing Collaboration between the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and Adam Matthew Digital.” Southern California and Hawaii Chapter Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, March 2, Santa Barbara, California.
• 2019, “The Darius L. Thieme Collection of Yorùbá Music, 1964-1967: A Collaborative Archiving Project.” Invited lecture presented at Documenting the Sounds of Africa: A Symposium Celebrating the Re-opening of the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and Honoring the Work of Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, UCLA, January 11.
• 2016 Co-curator with Neel Agrawal, African Drumming Laws: Colonial Governance of African Customs, Exhibition at LA Law Library (January-March 2016)
• 2016, Panelist, “What Does Cultural Sustainability Sound Like? Promises and Perils of Innovation and Transformation in African Musics.” African Studies Association Annual Meeting, December 1, Washington, DC.
• 2016, Discussant, “Beyond Cultural Imperialism.” Southern California and Hawaii Chapter Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, March 4, Los Angeles, California.

Selected Publications

• 2019, “Afrobeat” and “Jùjú” in Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. New York: Bloomsbury.
• 2017-2019 Contributing Editor, Adam Matthew Digital/UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive Partnership – Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings.
• 2015, “Biographical Writing and Individual Creativity in African Musicology.” In Discourses in African Musicology: J. H. Kwabena Nketia Festschrift. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press/Maize Books.
• 2014, Review of Yorùbá Music in the Twentieth Century: Identity, Agency, and Performance Practice, by Bode Omojola. Yearbook for Traditional Music 46.
• 2014, “Cambodian Music Festival Salutes Tradition, New Artists Paving the Way.” LA Times, July 26.
• 2014, Review of Living the Hiplife: Celebrity and Entrepreneurship in Ghanaian Popular Music, by Jesse Weaver Shipley. Ethnomusicology Review 18/19. Online.
• 2013, The Yorùbá Dùndún [Talking Drum] in Local and Transnational Perspective: A Cosmopolitan Tradition in the Making, Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles.
• 2012 Co-author with Timothy Rice, “The Individual in Musical Ethnography.” Ethnomusicology 56(2).
• 2011 “Talking Drums in Los Angeles: Brokering Culture in an American Metropolis.” Black Music Research Journal 31(1).
• 2010 Review of Ancient Text Messages of the Yorùbá Bàtá Drum: Cracking the Code, by Amanda Villepastour. Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology 15. Online.

• 2006 “Collecting and Connecting: Archiving Filipino American Music in Los Angeles.” Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology 11. Online.