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 both elected to the TTU Institute for Inclusive Excellence
and the recipient of TTU Office of International Affairs’ Study
Abroad Award. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts
at Boston and Indiana University and as a guest lecturer at
University College Cork and the University of Limerick, 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 Dancers, and Caprock Morris Border dance team.
He serves as External Examiner for the BA program in Traditional
Music and Dance at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at
the University of Limerick, as well as External Examiner for PhD
dissertations at institutions in the USA, UK, and Ireland and
for the Irish government’s music program accreditation bureau.
In 2011 he began a two-year term as President of the American
Musicological Society – Southwest regional chapter.
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), “Identities,
Contexts, and Gender in the Irish Musical Landscape” (in
Irish Studies: Geographies and Gender), “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, Music in
Art, Contemporary
Music Review, the
Journal of American Folklore,
Southern Culture, 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, College
Music 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
School of African and Oriental Studies (London), Texas Music
Educators Association (San Antonio), Hearing Landscape
Critically: Sense, Text, Ideology (Oxford), the North Atlantic
Fiddle Conference (Derry), Dance Music Research Forum (Donegal),
Music and Migration (Southampton, ENG), the Representing Ireland
conference (Newcastle), the Society for Musicology in Ireland
(Derry), 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), the North Atlantic Fiddle
Conference (Derry-Donegal), Dance Music Research Forum
(Limerick), 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, in press), which explores the interaction of
African-American and Irish-American musical styles before the
Civil War.
He is also a former nightclub bouncer,
carpenter, lobster fisherman, and oil-rig roughneck, and 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
Dr Smith is the Executive Director of the Roots Music
Institute: http://rootsmusicinstitute.com