David Locke

David Locke received a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology in 1978 from Wesleyan University, where he studied with David McAllester, Mark Slobin, and Gen'ichi Tsuge. At Wesleyan, his teachers of traditional African music included Abraham Adzinyah and Freeman Donkor. He conducted doctoral dissertation fieldwork in Ghana from 1975 to 1977 under the supervision of Professor J. H. K. Nketia. In Ghana, his teachers and research associates included Godwin Agbeli, Gideon Foli Alorwoyie, and Abubakari Lunna. He...See more

David Locke received a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology in 1978 from Wesleyan University, where he studied with David McAllester, Mark Slobin, and Gen'ichi Tsuge. At Wesleyan, his teachers of traditional African music included Abraham Adzinyah and Freeman Donkor. He conducted doctoral dissertation fieldwork in Ghana from 1975 to 1977 under the supervision of Professor J. H. K. Nketia. In Ghana, his teachers and research associates included Godwin Agbeli, Gideon Foli Alorwoyie, and Abubakari Lunna. He has published numerous books and articles on African music and regularly performs the repertories of music and dance about which he writes. He teaches in the Music Department of Tufts University, where he also serves as a faculty advisor to the Tufts-in-Ghana Foreign Study Program and member of the steering committee of the Africana Studies Program. His recent projects include an oral history and musical documentation of dance-drumming from the Dagbamba people, and an in-depth musical documentation of Agbadza, an idiom of Ewe music. He is active in the Society for Ethnomusicology and has served as the president of its Northeast Chapter. He founded the Agbekor Drum and Dance Society, a community-based performance group dedicated to the study of traditional Ghanaian music, and the Samanyanga Mbira Club, a community-based performance group dedicated to the study of Shona mbira music. Study of Akan traditional music-culture is Locke's most recent focus. See less