Research Collaborator

McGill University

Dr. Brackett writes about linkages between musical style, genre, and identity in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music with an approach that blends archival research, critical theory, and music analysis. Recent publications have explored popular music, contemporary art music, and film music. His book on the history and social meaning of twentieth-century popular music, Interpreting Popular Music (2000), was a finalist for an Association for Recorded Sound Collections book award. His collection of annotated source readings, The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader: Histories and Documents (2004), was published recently by Oxford University Press, and he is currently working on a book examining the relationship between genre and identity in 20th-century popular music. He has published articles and reviews in several music journals, contributed chapters to several edited volumes, and has served on the editorial boards of Popular Music, American Music, and The Journal of Popular Music Studies. In addition to his research activities, Dr. Brackett is a composer and was active for many years as a guitarist – playing jazz, popular, and classical music. He earned a BA (University of California, Santa Cruz), master’s degree (New England Conservatory of Music), and PhD (Cornell University) in music/musicology.