A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
A silhouette of a person against a blue background.

On This Page

Jon Turner

Lecturer

Contact

Bio

Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology, UC Berkeley.

My research focuses on relationships between musicians, makers, and instrument-repair-technicians in California, USA and São Paulo, Brazil. I investigate how the creative processes of both musicians and those who make and maintain their instruments are influenced by economics, climate change, pedagogical structures, automation, and cultural politics of technology.

Raised in Phoenix, Arizona, I completed a certificate program in guitar building at Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery (2012). Since then, I have worked as a guitar maker and repair person in San Francisco (2012-2014) and Oakland (2020-2022) and São Paulo (2022-2023). I hold a BA (2017) and MA (2019) in Music from Berkeley. My research has been generously funded by the Fulbright Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies, Berkeley Center for New Media, and the Berkeley Department of Music.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course follows migrations both forced and voluntary from Africa across trade routes to the Caribbean and Brazil as a frame for examining musics traditional and popular. In addition to examining these specific musics and musical instruments we will consider how musics from the Afro- Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian experiences influence Latin and South America and the Untied States. This course emphasizes selected ethnographic reading, seminar discussion, individual ethnographic experiences, and the chance for students to connect knowledge from the seminar to real world performances and musicians.

Class Number

1628

Credits

3