Music Department
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Musicology, University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., Musicology, University of California, Los Angeles
B.A., Music, Wesleyan University
Fields: Brazilian music, Latin American music, Music and Social Movements, Ethnomusicology, Musicology
Contact Information
Email: swhelden@holycross.edu
Office Phone: 508-793-2297
Office: Brooks 460
Biography
Schuyler Whelden is a music scholar with research and teaching interests in the popular and traditional musics of Brazil, Latin America, and West Africa. His scholarly work focuses on popular music and protest in Brazil, examining political engagement by musicians through performative and non-performative means. He has conducted archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil, Ghana, India, and Ireland thanks to support from a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a Lenart Fellowship, and two Foreign Language and Area Studies Scholarships.
Prof. Whelden’s book project, Voicing Opinion: Musical Performance and Political Participation in Brazil, uses the musical theater production Opinião (Opinion), which was staged in Rio de Janeiro in 1964 at the onset of the Brazilian military dictatorship, as a lens into the performative and non-performative strategies adopted by performers and audiences as they navigated the authoritarianism of the time. The project draws on archival research and interviews with participants to explore the inequities and prejudices that performers in the show suffered due to the subaltern status conferred by their socioeconomic, racial, geographic, and gender positions.
Prof. Whelden’s work has been published in Music & Politics, the Journal of Extreme Anthropology, and The Oxford Handbook of Timbre. He has presented his work at annual meetings for the Society of Ethnomusicology, the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, the Brazilian Studies Association, Latin American Studies Association, and the American Comparative Literature Association, among other conferences and symposia.
Prof. Whelden is co-creator of the podcast Massa: Brazilian Music & Culture, which offers accessible, in-depth discussions and dissections of artists, genres, and topics in Brazilian music. More at www.massapodcast.org. He has also worked as a professional songwriter and touring musician, performing across North America.