Biography
Raised in the traditional music communities of Sacred Harp singing, Old Time music, and Contradancing in the Southeast of the United States, Dr. Andrew Snyder has been interested in diverse music cultures since his childhood. A trumpeter, singer, guitarist, and pianist, he has played in a wide range of styles and ensembles, including brass bands, jazz, Brazilian music, Balkan music, and classical music, and he is co-founder of San Francisco’s Mission Delirium Brass Band.
With a background in Romance languages, Andrew focused on music in Brazil for his doctoral dissertation in Ethnomusicology, completed in 2018 at the University of California-Berkeley. This research formed the basis of his book, Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro (Wesleyan University Press 2022), which focuses on the vibrant community of carnival brass bands in contemporary Rio that has come to view itself as an activist movement during a period of political crisis.
With a broad focus on intersections between activism and festivity, his articles have been published in Ethnomusicology, Latin American Music Review, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Ethnomusicology Review, and the Yearbook for Traditional Music among others. His new book project, Musical Excess: Sentiments of Coloniality in Lisbon's Brazilian Carnival explores the emerging migrant world of blocos as a negotiation of the complex Luso-Brazilian relationship.
During the completion of his PhD and afterwards, Andrew has been involved in collaborative projects as a co-editor of three books: HONK! A Street Music Renaissance of Music and Activism (Routledge 2020), which focuses on the movements and festivals of the global network of alternative brass band; At the Crossroads: Music and Social Justice (Indiana University Press 2022), which received the Ellen Koskoff Prize and an honorary mention for the Bruno Nettl Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2023; and Festival Activism, which considers festive settings as privileged sites for activist projects. He is also the co-editor of the Journal of Festive Studies, an international and interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of festivities around the world.
Andrew has been at INET-md since 2020 as a recipient of the Concurso Estímulo ao Emprego Científico grant provided by Portugal's Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. See more at http://www.andrewsnydermusic.com/
