James B. Morford, PhD
About
James B. Morford serves as a faculty member in the Department of Music at Western Washington University, where he teaches coursework in Musicology and Ethnomusicology, acts as Coordinator of the Musicology Area, and advises the Western Americana Music Club. Dr. Morford holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Washington with a specialization in music and dance in the West African Republic of Guinea and its diasporas. He earned MM and BM degrees in Music Education, with certification in K-12 music education from the State of Washington and certification in World Music Pedagogy from Smithsonian Folkways. 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. 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, music and industrial pollution in the Mid-Ohio Valley, and sound manipulation in news media reporting.