Afropop Worldwide

Gregory Barz is an associate professor of ethnomusicology in the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, with appointments in Anthropology and the Divinity school. He is the producer of the 2007 Grammy-nominated album, Singing for Life: Songs of Hope, Healing, and HIV/AIDS in Uganda (Smithsonian Folkways) that draws on his field recordings in East Africa of the music of HIV+ women’s groups. His research in Uganda was supported by a senior research fellowship with the Fulbright African AIDS Research Program. His recent research involves documenting the role of music in contemporary reconciliation efforts in post-genocide Rwanda genocide. He is author or editor of 9 books and CDs including most recently Singing for Life: Music and HIV/AIDS in Uganda (Routledge) and the second edition of Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives on Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (Oxford). Oxford University Press will publish his co-edited volume, The Culture of AIDS in Africa: Hope and Healing in Music and the Arts in 2010. He has been a Franklin Fellow in global citizenship in Lugano, Switzerland for 2 years and will return in 2010 to South Africa as a senior research fellow at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein.