I am an artist and scholar who reimagines life and celebrates culture through a Black lens using photo-based visual art, music and dance performance, ethnographic research, and published writing full of empathy and funk as my tools.
My training includes a B.A. in Fine Art and Spanish Language from Morehouse College, a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan, and music making in communities across the African diaspora, especially Peru, Colombia, Cuba, and Brazil.
I have taught students of all ages and am formerly Professor of Africana Studies at California State University Monterey Bay.
I am the co-author of Silencing the Drum: Religious Racism and Afro-Brazilian Sacred Music (Amherst College Press), author of Carlos Aldama’s Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum (Indiana University Press) and Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance: Timba Music and Black Identity in Cuba (University of Michigan Press).