People | Faculty | Melvin L. Butler

Melvin Butler

Appointments:

Assistant Professor of Music

Education:

Ph.D., New York University, 2005

Contact:

Office: Goodspeed 301
Phone: (773) 702-3499
Email: mlbutler@uchicago.edu

Melvin L. Butler, Assistant Professor of Music, is an ethnomusicologist with special interests in music and religious practice in Haitian, Jamaican, and African American communities. His published articles and reviews have appeared in Ethnomusicology, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Black Music Research Journal, Current Musicology, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Current Musicology. In addition to a Fulbright IIE field research grant (2001-2002), Butler is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship (1999-2003) and was the 2004-2005 Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellow at Dartmouth College. From 2005 to 2008, he taught at the University of Virginia. His current research explores performance, Pentecostal faith, and cultural identity in Haiti. As a saxophonist, he has worked with celebrated Haitian konpa group Tabou Combo and with numerous jazz artists, including Betty Carter, Jimmy McGriff, Donald Byrd, Christian McBride, Joey DeFrancesco, and Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band. At Chicago since 2008.

Selected Works

"Ethnomusicology and the African Diaspora," in African Diaspora Studies and the Disciplines. Edited by. Tejumola Olaniyan, James Sweet, and MadeleineWong. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, forthcoming.
        
"Performing Pentecostalism: Music, Identity, and the Interplay of Jamaican and African American Styles," in Rhythms of the Atlantic World: Rituals, Remembrances, and Revisions. Edited by Ifeoma Nwankwo and Mamadou Diouf. University of Michigan Press, forthcoming.

"Dancing around Dancehall: Pentecostalism, Popular Culture, and Musical Practice in Transnational Jamaica and Haiti," in Constructing Vernacular Culture in the Trans-Caribbean. Edited by Holger Henke, Karl-Heinz Magister, and Alissa Trotz. Pp. 63-99. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008.

"Thoughts on the Intersection of Race and Faith in the Study of Popular Music," Journal of Popular Music Studies 19 (1) (April 2007): 113-117.

"'Nou Kwe nan Sentespri'/ 'We Believe in the Holy Spirit': Music, Ecstasy, and Identity in Haitian Pentecostal Worship," Black Music Research Journal 22(1) (Spring 2002): 85-125.

"Musical Style and Experience in a Brooklyn Pentecostal Church: An 'Insider's' Perspective," Current Musicology 70 (2000): 33-50.