James B. Morford, PhD
About
James B. Morford is a faculty member in the Department of Music at Western Washington University, teaching coursework in Musicology and Ethnomusicology, acting as Coordinator of the Musicology Area, and serving as advisor to the WWU Roots Music Group. Dr. Morford holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Washington with a specialization in music and dance in the Republic of Guinea, West Africa and its diasporas. He earned MM and BM degrees in Music Education and a BS in Physics, with certification in K-12 music education from the state of Washington and certification in World Music Pedagogy from Smithsonian Folkways. Before arriving at WWU, Dr. Morford taught at the University of Washington in the School of Music, Department of American Ethnic Studies, Department of Dance, and Interdisciplinary Honors Program, at the University of Puget Sound as Adjunct Professor of Ethnomusicology, and in the Puyallup School District as a General Music Specialist. Dr. Morford’s publications include peer-reviewed work in the fields of Ethnomusicology, Music Theory, Community Music, and Music Education. Dr. Morford has performed professionally in a variety of contexts, and has published both studio recordings and scores of his original compositions and arrangements. He currently serves as co-managing editor of the Analytical Approaches to World Music Journal and as co-chair of the Special Interest Group for Music Analysis in the Society for Ethnomusicology. In the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Morford works as On-Site Reviewer for the racial equity-focused arts funding agency 4Culture and co-founded the Guinea Arts Cooperative, a group dedicated to raising awareness and funding through arts- and education-based events in response to a West African Ebola Virus Disease outbreak. His current research activities include projects related to African and Afro-diasporic musics, metric modeling and analysis, participatory music-making, music and industrial pollution in the Mid-Ohio Valley, teaching and pedagogy, and sound manipulation in news media reporting.