About

A musicologist and saxophonist interested in popular music and experimentalisms after 1950, I am at home in critical discussions of globally distributed popular musics, musics of the African Diaspora, jazz (#BAM), sound studies, and Euro-American art musics. My interdisciplinary training in (ethno)musicology and continental philosophy informs my teaching and research with perspectives from critical/social theory and a focus on relationships between theorizations of aesthetics, interpretation, and identity. Extensive background as a teacher and improvising multi-instrumental performer inform my cultivation of inclusive classrooms and student engagement that aim to honor difference in terms of how each of us “be” as much as how we “know.” My greatest long-term concern as a scholar and teacher is the re-visioning of institutional music discourse toward a more global understanding of music study; one that forefronts inclusion and accessibility and is informed by practical and theoretical recommendations from decolonization, social justice, and critical race theory.

Publications appear in the Journal of Jazz Studies, The International Journal of New Media, Technology, and the Arts, and DownBeat Magazine and I have presented research at conferences throughout the United States, UK, and Europe. As a saxophonist I have worked in American and European scenes and have been a teaching artist for the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. I presently reside in Cleveland, OH and teach at Case Western Reserve University.

email: kluth (dot) aj (at) gmail (dot) com

Curriculum Vitae