Alex Blue V (Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology at UC Santa Barbara & Assistant Professor of Music at the College of William and Mary)

Sketchbook with Daniel Montoya Jr.

Alex Blue V is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology at UC Santa Barbara, and the 2019-2021 Thurgood Marshall Fellow in African and African American Studies at Dartmouth College. He was recently appointed as Assistant Professor of Music at the College of William and Mary. In his new position at the College of William and Mary, Blue will teach courses on race and music, sound studies, and hip-hop production, and will continue his research in the areas of sound, race, identity, and urban space. His dissertation is an ethnographic study of hip-hop in contemporary Detroit, Michigan, that explores narratives of death and dying and illuminates numerous ways the creation, performance, and consumption of hip-hop is used for spatial reorientation, identity formation, and other means in a rapidly-changing city. He also served as a Fellow in the 2018-19 Ithaca College Predoctoral Diversity Scholars Program and has received a number of grants and fellowships in support of his research. Outside of his academic pursuits, Alex enjoys a very full life as a musical “jack-of-all-trades,” working as a performer, educator, arranger, clinician, designer, consultant, and more for a wide variety of ensembles across a litany of musical styles. He holds a Bachelor's in Trombone Performance from Texas Tech University, and a Masters in Jazz Pedagogy from the University of North Texas. Instagram: blue_tha_fiff Twitter: @alexbluev https://aaas.dartmouth.edu/people https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8DV32SN --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sketchbookpodcast/support