Christopher J. Smith
Dr Christopher J. Smith is Associate
Professor and Chair of Musicology/Ethnomusicology and director
of the Vernacular Music Center at the Texas Tech University
School of Music. He holds the Bachelor of Arts (Music, Summa Cum
Laude) from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and a
Master’s in Music (Jazz, Magna Cum Laude) and Ph.D. in
Musicology (with high distinction) from the Indiana University
School of Music. He is the 1997 recipient of the John H. Edwards
Fellowship, the 1998 recipient of the Walter Kaufmann Musicology
Prize from Indiana, a 2003 recipient of the Alumni Association’s
New Faculty Award, in 2005 and 2009 was twice the recipient of
the “Professing Excellence” award, in 2006 was elected to the
Teaching Academy at Texas Tech, in 2010 was the recipient of the
Texas Tech President’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and in 2011
was elected to the TTU Institute for Inclusive Excellence. He
has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and
Indiana University and as a guest lecturer at University College
Cork, in addition to Texas Tech, as well as leading roving
field-trips for students in the West of Ireland, chairing the
Vernacular Music Center Scholarship Committee, and directing the
Roots Music Institute (a 501c3 organization). At Texas Tech, he
serves as faculty advisor for the Tech Irish Set-Dancers,
Caprock English Country Dances, and Caprock Morris Border dance
team.
He teaches courses in American, 20th
century, and African Diasporic musics, as well as vernacular,
world music, and ethnomusicology topics. His research interests
are in American and African-American Music, 20th Century Music,
Irish traditional music and other folk musics and cultures,
improvisation, music and politics, performance practice, and
historical performance.
He is the author of
Celtic Backup for All
Instrumentalists, “The Celtic Guitar” (in
The Cambridge Companion to
the Guitar), “Miles Davis and the Semiotics of Improvised
Performance” (in Improvisation: In the Course of Performance), “Trusting the
Tradition: The Meaning of the Irish Session Workshop” (in
Proceedings of the VIIth International Symposium on Cultural Diversity
in Music Education: The Local and the Global), “Gaelic and
Continental Musical Interaction in Early Modern Ireland” (in
The Renaissance in Ireland), “Cinematic Constructions of Irish
Musical Identity” (in
Popular Culture and Postmodern Ireland), “Papa Legba and the
Liminal Spaces of the Blues” (in
American Cinema and the
Southern Imaginary), and
Irish Session Tunes by Ear,
and a variety of other essays and book chapters.
He has published articles in
College Music Symposium, New
Hibernia Review,
T.D.R. The Drama Review,
R.P.M. (Journal of the
International Association for the Study of Popular Music),
Early Music America,
Contemporary Music Review, the
Bloomington Voice,
Early Music (London),
Irish Music,
Lubbock Magazine, Historical
Performance, Piping
Today, The Journal of
Music in Ireland and
The Tallgrass Journal, reviews in the
Journal of the American
Musicological Society, and chapters on music in
The World and Its Peoples
for Brown Reference Group, the
Encyclopedia of Franco-American Relations for ABC-Clio, and the
Encyclopedia of Music in
Ireland (Blackrock).
He has presented papers at the national
meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for
American Music, the American Musicological Society, the
International Society for the Study of Popular Music, the
Narrative Society, the American Council for Irish Studies, the
Film and History Society, the Stage and Screen Conference, the
Southern American Studies Association, and the LYRICA Society
for Text and Music Studies; has chaired sessions at University
College Cork, Scoil Samraidh Willie Clancy in County Clare, and
the Popular Culture Association; originated and chaired the
First Annual Texas Tech Fine Arts Colloquium, and has presented
papers internationally at the Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Conference (Glasgow), the Representing Ireland conference
(Newcastle), the Council for Cultural Diversity in Music
Education (Brisbane), the International Meetings of the Council
for Irish Studies (Liverpool), the International Ballad
Conference (Netherlands), the International Council for the
Study of Traditional Music (Newfoundland), and the UCCB
Storytelling Symposium (Nova Scotia).
He has designed and created World Wide Web
content for Prentice-Hall’s music history textbook series, for
the Buddy Holly Center, and for www.banjosessions.com. His
current book project is Minstrelsy and the Creolization of American Culture (University of
Illinois Press), which explores the interaction of
African-American and Irish-American musical styles before the
Civil War. He is also a published poet.
In addition, he records and tours
internationally with Altramar medieval music ensemble (7 CDs to
date on the Dorian Group label, with concerts throughout North
America, Canada, Holland, Ireland, Germany, and Austria), leads
the Irish traditional band Last Night’s Fun (with TTU Professor
Angela Mariani) and the Juke Band (pre-WWII blues and jazz),
directs the Texas Tech University Celtic Ensemble, has lectured
or performed at hundreds of colloquia, concerts, workshops, and
pub sessions across the Continent and in Europe, and on National
Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, and the Fox Network
nationwide, and in 2005 released a solo CD of Irish traditional
music, which was selected for inclusion on a compilation disc by
Global Rhythm magazine’s May 2006 Song Contest (distributed to
over 130,000 readers). His latest disc with Last Night’s Fun is
Johnny Faa, a program
of songs and tunes in the Irish tradition. He has written liner
notes for Dorian Group, Ltd., for Naxos World, and for
independent CD releases and served as columnist for
www.irishmusic.com. He was the traditional-music consultant for
noted composer Dan Welcher’s
Minstrels of the Kells
and performed at its TTU premiere and on an Olympic tour of
mainland China, directs the annual Caprock Celtic Christmas at
Texas Tech, formerly served on the International Advisory Board
for the Naxos World record label and currently serves on the
boards of Supporters of Fine Arts, Flatlands Dance Theatre, and
Caprock Early Music, as co-Director of the TTU Symposium of
World Musics and Southwest Early Music, as informal consultant
to the Society for Ethnomusicology and to the Buddy Holly Center
educational program, and on the Steering Committee of the Buddy
Holly Symposium, and is a founding staff member of ZoukFest, the
world’s only music camp and festival for players of the Irish
bouzouki. As an instrumentalist, he concertizes on Irish
bouzouki, tenor banjo, button accordion, slide guitar, saz,
lute, gittern, Turkish lavta, and percussion.
To contact Christopher Smith, email christopher.smith@ttu.edu.
Dr Smith directs the TTU Celtic Ensemble
Dr Smith's TTU homepage: http://webpages.acs.ttu.edu/chrissmi/
Dr Smith's commercial homepage: http://coyotebanjo.com