John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache, Irish, German, Chicano) is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley (AY 2021-22) and an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University. His research interests include jazz and improvised music performance and composition, urban American Indian lived experiences and cultural productions, music technologies, recording and archiving practices, social constructions of “noise,” Native and African American jazz cultures, and the Creek and Kaw saxophonist Jim Pepper. Perea is the author of Intertribal Native American Music in the United States (2014, Oxford University Press). His most recent publication, co-authored with Jacob E. Perea, is “’What the Music Could Be: Revisiting the Unexpectedness of Jim Pepper” (2019, Kalfou).
In addition to his scholarly activities, John-Carlos maintains an active career as a GRAMMY® Award winning multi-instrumentalist and recording artist in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has recorded on eighteen albums as a sideman and two as a leader, First Dance (2001) and Creation Story (2014). His most recent creative work is Improvising Home (2017), a multi-movement work for cedar flute and large ensemble funded by grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at SFSU. In April 2019, John-Carlos was recognized by the San Francisco Arts Commission’s American Indian Initiative for his musical contribution “to reclaim space, to challenge false narratives, and to reimagine public art from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples.”