Music and Cats / Book of Abstracts - Catalog - Page 57
Presenters
Dani Wilde
Dani Wilde is Deputy Course Leader in Music at BIMM University
Brighton. She is also an internationally known blues performer,
awarded "Best Vocalist" at the 2015 British Blues Awards and
nominated in 2025 at what is now the UK Blues Awards. Dani has
recorded for Ruf Records/Vizztone with celebrated producers such as
Mike Vernon, releasing five studio albums, a live album, and numerous
singles — including a number 1 in Italy, many Top 10s, and others that
have received airplay on BBC Radio 2 and Sirius XM (USA). Dani has
toured the UK/EU, USA/Canada, and Africa, performing at iconic venues
such as the Royal Albert Hall and appearing alongside artists such as
Pee Wee Ellis, Samantha Fish and Johnny Winter. She is also a
longstanding columnist in Blues Matters Magazine and a research-active
postgraduate scholar.
Popeye
Davindar Singh
Davindar Singh is a Presidential Scholar and PhD candidate in
Ethnomusicology with a secondary field in Anthropology at Harvard
University. His dissertation project Cultures of Cargo: Illicit Patronage,
Musical Media, and the Corruption of Punjabi Supply Chains examines how
people in Punjab, India, have used music since the colonial era to map,
create, or combat patronage networks that circulate resources from,
among others, foodgrain and opiate supply chains. His ethnographic
work builds on 2.5 years of fieldwork to examine the criminalized
political economy of such networks in village tractor and wrestling
competitions, Sikh militancy, and the assassination of musicians. His
historical work examines the role of music in foundational liberal
colonial social theories about ethnic difference, musical propaganda
about eugenic population control in the colonial and postcolonial
industrialization of Punjab’s agrarian supply chains, and the
“criminal” supply lines of postcolonial Punjab. His
research has been supported by Fulbright-Hays, the Mellon
Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies,
American Council on Education, and the Social Science
Research Council. He has served on the Society for
Ethnomusicology’s Council and Constitutional Committee,
and co-chaired SEM’s Sound Studies Section and Economic
Ethnomusicology SIG. He used to be a saxophonist.
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