who?

I'm a musician, writer, editor, and researcher of popular music. I'm particularly interested in how technology and identity meet in the wavy air. I also pay close attention to how people talk about and perform music--as well as their roles as musicians, fans, critics, etc.  

research

A lot of the research I'm doing is ethnographic, which means I go out and listen to people, watch what they do, talk to them, make recordings and take notes. (This is the part that makes reading all of that theory worthwhile.) I also look at online discourse and promotional materials written about commercial music. In the summer of 2008, I completed my MA thesis, Trails of the Dark Horse: Culture, Metaculture and Pathways of Indie Music, based on research I did at the Secretly Canadian record label. My article   “Liminal States: Life as an Indie Musician on Taiwan” was recently published in Folklore Forum. I presented my research on "metacultural intermediaries" in rock promotions at the 2008 Society for Ethnomusicology conference. My PhD research concerns noise, punk and indie scenes in China.