Hi there! Thanks for checking out my site.

I’m an ethnomusicologist by training, an educator and research administrator by profession. I’m an Africanist by the grace of God, the Ancestors, and my beloved colleagues and teachers. Percussion and voice have informed those pathways, but I enjoy playing a variety of string instruments, too. My primary research focuses on the music of Ugandan traditional healers.

In addition to general interests in music, culture, and healing, some of my specific teaching interests include African music, American popular music, Caribbean music, popular music, and choral music. It’s been my pleasure to teach students at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, at Grinnell College in Iowa, at the USD Sanford School of Medicine, and at Dakota State University, among other places.

I am committed to performance as an essential component of research and teaching. My research in Uganda has involved in-depth study of several instruments from drum set to indigenous strings with numerous musicians, most notably Dr. Damascus Kafumbe and Ssematimba Frank Sibyangu. As a jazz drummer, I have performed with Wess “Warmdaddy” Anderson, Etienne Charles, Roland Guerin, Jason Marsalis, Marcus Printup, Marcus Roberts, and a number of other artists. I have studied merengue and salsa with two Dominican artists, Maestro Dr. Juan-Ramón Guzman and percussion phenom Julio Figueroa. As a singer, I performed and studied with choral music luminary Weston Noble, and I worked for six years as a staff singer at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tallahassee. Musicking and productive play remain at the heart of what I do in the classroom, in the field, at home, and really even in the office.