Steven Feld was appointed Professor of Anthropology and Music at UNM in Fall 2003 and promoted to Distinguished Professor in 2005. He previously held appointments at Columbia University, New York University, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a regular visiting appointment as Professor of World Music at the Institute of Music, University of Oslo, Norway.

A long time Santa Fe resident, Feld has been active in New Mexico music scenes since the 1970s when he was a founder of the New Mexico Jazz Workshop. More recently he has played to New Mexico audiences as a member of the Tom Guralnick trio, leader of the trombone choir Bonefied, and member of the Out of Context conduction ensemble.

Feld's academic research principally concerns the anthropology of sound and voice. From 1975-2000 he studied the sound world–from environmental sounds to bird calls to language, poetry and music–of the Bosavi rainforest region in Papua New Guinea. He has more recently researched the sound world of Greek Macedonia and Romani ("gypsy") instrumentalists, and produced a multi-CD project on the worldwide culture of bells. His current research is on jazz in the West African city of Accra, Ghana, where he also performs and records with Accra Trane Station, an African band dedicated to the musical legacy of John Coltrane.

Feld received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "genius prize" fellowship in 1991, and in 1994 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For 2003-2004 he received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is founder and director of VoxLox, a documentary sound art label whose CDs advocate for human rights and acoustic ecology.

His books include Sound and Sentiment (1982/1990, U. Pennsylvania Press; winner of the J. I. Staley Prize, 1991); Music Grooves (with Charles Keil, 1994, U. Chicago Press; winner of the Chicago Folklore Prize, 1995); Senses of Place (edited with Keith Basso, 1996, SAR Press); Bosavi-English-Tok Pisin Dictionary (with Bambi Schieffelin, 1998, ANU Press); Jean Rouch: Ciné-Ethnography (editor/translator, 2003, U. Minnesota Press); and Exposures: A White Woman in West Africa (with Virginia Ryan, VoxLox, 2007.)

Equally active as a documentary sound artist, his CD recordings include Voices of the Rainforest (1991, Rykodisc; produced by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart); Rainforest Soundwalks (2001, EarthEar); Bosavi: Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea (2001, Smithsonian Folkways); Bells and Winter Festivals of Greek Macedonia (2002, Smithsonian Folkways); Romani Soundscapes in Bright Balkan Morning: Romani Lives and the Power of Music in Greek Macedonia (2002, Wesleyan U. Press) with Dick Blau (photographs), and Charles & Angeliki Keil (texts); and on his VoxLox label, Iraqi Music in A Time of War: Rahim AlHaj in New York (2003), The Time of Bells 1-4 (2004-2007), Suikinkutsu: A Japanese Underground Water Zither (2006), and Accra Trane Station: Meditations for John Coltrane (2007).

www.voxlox.net
www.groovology.org
www.bosavipeoplesfund.net