Daniel E. Atkinson

Daniel E. Atkinson is an independent scholar who received his PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 2011. After stints as a jazz musician, journalist and Music Director for an NPR affiliate, he became a specialist of Afro-American vernacular expression. His dissertation research was conducted at the former slave plantation-turned-world’s-largest prison, Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana. From that research came two Angola Project recordings with composer and saxophonist Howard Wiley and it is now housed at NMAAHC.