Heather MacLachlan (Ph.D., Cornell University, 2009) is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio. She is the author of Burma’s Pop Music Industry: Creators, Distributors, Censors (University of Rochester Press, 2011) and Singing Out: GALA Choruses and Social Change (University of Michigan Press, 2020). She has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters on topics including music-making in diaspora, music theory pedagogy, American country music, and the intersections of music and religion.

Beth Snyder is Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of North Texas. Formerly, she served as Research Associate on the UK AHRC-funded “Music, Migration and Mobility” project based at the Royal College of Music, London. She is a graduate of New York University’s doctoral program in musicology and also holds an MA and BA in philosophy. Her research has been published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society and Twentieth-Century Music. Dr. Snyder’s work is motivated by an interest in the intersections between music and politics, as well as philosopher Ernst Bloch’s provocative theory of music’s significance.

Kai West is a doctoral candidate in musicology at the University of Michigan and the assistant editor for Music & Politics. His research focuses on musical instruments in popular music, with wider interests in US music and critical race studies. He is currently writing a dissertation that examines contemporary electric guitar culture at the intersections of community, tradition, and technology. His published research can be found in the Journal of the American Musicological Society and the edited volume Music in Twin Peaks: Listen to the Sounds (Routledge, 2021).

Schuyler Whelden is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the College of the Holy Cross. He holds a PhD in musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on popular music and protest in Brazil, examining political engagement by musicians and audiences. His book project focuses on the musical theater production Opinião, which ran in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre, Brazil, for six months in 1964 and 1965 as a response to the country’s military dictatorship. He is the producer and co-host of the educational podcast Massa: Brazilian Music & Culture.

Marian Wilson Kimber is Professor of Musicology at the University of Iowa. Wilson Kimber’s numerous publications have treated Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, women’s musical activities, and the role of poetic recitation in concert life. Her book, The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word (University of Illinois Press, 2017), won the H. Earle Johnson Subvention from the Society for American Music. Wilson Kimber is a founding member of the duo Red Vespa, which performs comic spoken word pieces by women composers. Her current project is a book about the roles of clubwomen activists in shaping American music.