Podcasts, Partnerships, and Laboratories for American Music

I might not have gotten involved with podcasts, were it not for two colleagues, an undergraduate student, and Dolly Parton. For the past two and a half years, I have studied, produced, and taught from podcasts. They have changed my relationship to American music and those who care for its many streams. In this essay, I will share some observations on how podcasts may help us reflect differently on the values that propel our work as scholars and teachers. In my case, a variety of circumstances led me to the format, which in turn facilitated forms of connection and collaboration that I had not originally envisioned. As a disclaimer and invitation, I do not offer these thoughts from a position of podcasterly prestige or authority. There are other music scholars whose work in this medium is more widely known and explicitly anchored to American music studies. But I share my account as a podcast dabbler in the hope that it may offer some reassurance: yes, you can do this too. Whether you are a podcast aficionado or simply hoping to explore alternative methods of research and teaching, the following may offer some encouragement. It helped that I have a friend who has a podcast. Trevor Harvey, my colleague at the University of Iowa, hosts Ethnomusicology Today, a podcast for the Society for Ethnomusicology in which he speaks with scholars