Kevin Fellezs

Ethnomusicology
Historical Musicology
Jazz

Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology & AAADS

Full-Time Faculty



Ethnomusicology Area Chair (Fall '21)
On Leave (Spring '22)

Office Address:
806 Dodge Hall

kf2362@columbia.edu

(212) 854-3825





personal website

Kevin Fellezs joined our faculty as Assistant Professor of Music and African American Studies in 2012, in a joint appointment with the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia.? He was previously on the faculty of the University of California at Merced.? He holds the PhD in History of Consciousness (American Studies) from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
His recent book titled?Listen But Don’t Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Across the TransPacific?(Duke University Press, 2019) shows the ways in which slack key guitar is a site for the articulation of Hawaiian values. Native Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian slack key guitarists are, in fact, collectively reconfiguring notions of Hawaiian belonging, aesthetics, and politics throughout the transPacific.
His book titled?Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk and the Creation of Fusion?(Duke University Press, 2011) is a study of fusion (jazz-rock-funk) music of the 1970s, which won the 2012 Woody Guthrie Book Award.
He has published articles in?Jazz Perspectives, the?Journal of Popular Music Studies, and the?Journal of the Society for American Music. He has also published essays in a number of edited anthologies including?Alien Encounters: Asian Americans and Popular Culture?(Duke University),?Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures?(Equinox),?Yellow Power, Yellow Soul: The Radical Art of Fred Ho?(University of Illinois), the?Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter?(Cambridge University), and?Racism Postrace?(Duke University).

Recent Publications

Hawaiian Musicians Sing the Soft, Sweet Songs of Sovereignty
December, 2021




Those Days Are Gone Forever: Steely Dan's Grumpy Old Guys' Blues
November, 2021




From the Island of Berkeley: Hawaiian Belonging in California
August, 2020




Three Moments in Ki Ho’alu (Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar): Improvising As Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) Adaptative Strategy
April, 2020




Listen But Don’t Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Across the TransPacific
December, 2019




Nahenahe (soft, sweet, melodious): Sounding Out Native Hawaiian Self-Determination
November, 2019





Degrees from Other Institutions:
BA

Music/Jazz Studies

San Francisco State University

1998



MA

Humanities

San Francisco State University

2000



PhD

History of Consciousness, American Studies

UC Santa Cruz

2004