I serve as Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of the Vernacular Music Center at Texas Tech University School of Music. Here are my current faculty biography, and my professional vita in html and MSWord formats.
I teach courses in Musicology, Ethnomusicology, and Popular Music studies, and have also offered courses in the TTU Honors College, as well as having prior teaching experience at Indiana University, U. Mass. Boston, and University College Cork. I have been here since Fall 2000, and have welcomed the opportunity to play a role in revising, rethinking and updating Tech's approach to these topics.
I direct the TTU Vernacular Music Center, a center for research, teaching and advocacy in the realm of the world's oral-tradition and popular musics. We offer courses, workshops, concerts, and other sponsorship, and serve as liaison between the School of Music and a range of outside entities, including the Buddy Holly Symposium, the Caprock Celtic Association, the Fine Arts Academy of India, and the Texas Governors Music Office. Among other events, the VMC sponsors the Caprock Celtic Christmas and the annual Vernacular Music Center Scholarship. Here is a slideshow from the fieldtrip component of a Study Abroad course I lead to Ireland.
I am also heavily involved in research, publication, performance, and recording in the areas of jazz, classical, and world musics. You can find more information about these activities at my commercial website coyotebanjo.com
Courses I've revised or originated here at TTU
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maintained by Chris Smith