Ryan Skinner

Ryan Thomas Skinner is an ethnomusicologist who studies the local and global music cultures of contemporary Africa and its European and American diasporas. Specializing in the analytic methods of cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology, his research focuses on issues of popular culture, ethics, aesthetics, urbanism, public piety, cultural politics, nationalism, and the idea of Africa in the world today. Skinner is the author of Bamako Sounds: The Afropolitan Ethics of Malian Music (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), a musical ethnography of a West African urban culture. He is also the author and illustrator of a children's book, Sidikiba's Kora Lesson (Beaver's Pond Press, 2008) and is an accomplished kora (21-stringed West African harp) player.

For more information about Ryan's academic and creative projects, visit:

www.ryanskinner.org