David Font Navarrete

Phone: 718-960-7778
Office: Music Building, Room 304
Office Hours: By appointment requested via email
Rank: Assistant Professor

Degrees and Sources of Degrees

•  B.A., Antioch College; M.A., University of Maryland; Ph.D., York University

Biography

David Font-Navarrete is a musician, artist, and ethnomusicologist. He is Assistant Professor in the Department Music, Multimedia, Theatre, and Dance at Lehman College, and he is a member of the doctoral faculty in Music at the CUNY Graduate Center. 

He has conducted primary research in Cuba, Senegal, the Gambia, and the United States. Recurring themes in his research include: the confluence of Afro-Atlantic cultural traditions, avant-garde art, and ethnography; cultural archives; and multimedia technologies.  

His research has been received generous support from awards and grants, including: PSC-CUNY  and the CUNY Research Foundation; a US Latino Digital Humanities Grant-in-Aid (with Martin Tsang) from Arte Público Press and University of Houston; a Gerald E. and Corinne L Parsons Fund for Ethnography Award from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress; a Library Travel Grant from Díaz-Ayala Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection, the Cuban Research Institute, the Kimberly Greene Latin American and Caribbean Center, and the Florida International University Libraries; and a Wayne Shirley Fellowship from the Society for American Music.  

His current research projects include an annotated English translation of Lydia Cabrera's El Monte; an annotated edition of Música de los cultos africanos en Cuba: The Cabrera-Tarafa Collection, ca. 1956; and a monograph, tentatively titled Art at the Edge of Tradition: Notes on Orisha, Music, and the Age of Multimedia. 

Selected Publications

• • 2021. “Writing Orisha Music: Text, Tradition, and Creativity in Afro-Cuban Liturgy.” Religions 12 (11): 964.  
  • 2018. “Inside, Outside, and Between: On Translation and the Study of Afro-Cuban Music.” Musicology Now. 
  • 2016. “The Amplification of Muted Voices: Notes On a Recitation of the Adhan.” Sounding Out!  
  • 2016. “Ambient Sounds in Sublime Frequencies as Art (and/or) Ethnography.” In Punk Ethnography: The Sublime Frequencies Companion, edited by Michael Veal and E. Tammy Kim. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. 
• • 2016. Translation (Spanish–English) of “Timba, rumba, y la ‘apropiación desde adentro’” by Iñigo Sánchez Fuarros. In A Latin American Music Reader: Views from the South, edited by Javier León and Helena Simonett. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.  
  • 2015. “Awo Ayan: Metaphysical Dimensions of the Yoruba Divinity of Drumming.” Co-authored with Akinsola Akiwowo. In The Yoruba God of Drumming: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Wood That Talks, edited by Amanda Villepastour. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. 
  • 2015. “Bass 101: Miami, Rio, and the Global Music South.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 27 (4): 488-517. 
  • 2011. “‘File Under Import’: Musical Distortion, Exoticism, and Authenticité in Congotronics.” Ethnomusicology Review 16.