Tamara Roberts

Assistant Professor, Performance Studies and Ethnomusicology

Research interests: popular music, critical theory, performance theory, intercultural performance, scenography, music and spirituality

Office location: 218 Morrison

Email: tr@berkeley.edu

Office hours: Thu: 2:00-3:00

Personal statement

I am a scholar, teacher, and artist devoted to exploring the aesthetic, political, and spiritual potential of imaginative performance. My current research investigates the connection between sound and race, centering on forgotten interracial and intercultural histories of popular music in the U.S. In my book-in-progress, Resounding Afro Asia: Music and American Multiculturalism, I examine Afro Asian fusion music as an indication of the post-1965 "browning" of U.S. America and the impact of these demographic shifts on musical practice.

Other research interests include intercultural percussion performance, women's drumming communities, diasporic connections in African American and Afro-Caribbean vernacular traditions, the 1950/60s U.S. folk revival, and the politics of spiritual musical practice. In all, my work engages how music is used to construct individual identities and communities--often of seemingly disparate individuals--while at the same time holding the potential to render our lives more complexly than static labels of race, gender, and sexuality.

I also work as a composer, sound designer, and performer in music, theater, dance, and film.

Compositions/Performances/Publications

Books

Yellow Power Yellow Soul: The Revolutionary Music, Artistry, and Political Struggles of Fred Ho. Co-edited with Roger Buckley. University of Illinois Press, forthcoming.

Journal articles

"Michael Jackson's Kingdom: Race, Music, and the Sound of the Mainstream." Journal of Popular Music Studies 23.1 (March 2011).

Edited journal issues

Michael Jackson in/as U.S. Popular Culture. Special issue of Journal of Popular Music Studies 23.1 March 2011 (with Brandi Wilkins Catanese).

Book chapters

“Silk Road Blues: Black Music, Asian Music, and the Cultural Economy of Chicago.” Diasporic Counterpoints. Eds. Darlene Clark Hine and Ji-Yeon Yuh, forthcoming.

“Voicing Masculinity.” Blacktino Queer Performance: An Anthology. Eds. E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera. University of Michigan Press, forthcoming.

"Fred Ho as Person, Process, and Community." Introduction to Yellow Power Yellow Soul: The Revolutionary Music, Artistry, and Political Struggles of Fred Ho. Eds. Tamara Roberts and Roger Buckley. University of Illinois Press, forthcoming.

“The Elusive Truth: Intercultural Music Exchange in ‘Addictive.’” Interculturalism: Exploring Critical Issues. Eds. Dianne Powell and Fiona Sze. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2004, pg. 83-86.

Encyclopedia Entries

"Intercultural and interracial music." Encyclopedia of American Music and Culture. Ed. Jacqueline Edmondson. ABC-CLIO. In press.

I have given presentations and guest lectures at conferences/institutions including: Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), Performance Studies International (PSi), American Studies Association (ASA), Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), Society for American Music (SAM), International Conference of the Collegium for African American Research (CAAR), Heidelberg University Center for American Studies, Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and and the Americas (MESEA), Northwestern University, University of Chicago, DePaul University, Northpark Universty, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Education

B.A. (Music and Drama), Colorado College, 2000
M.A. (Performance Studies), Northwestern University, 2003
Ph.D. (Performance Studies), Northwestern University, 2009