Matthew Valnes

Appointed Spring 2022

Matthew Valnes is a visiting assistant professor of musicology at the University of Maryland School of Music. He completed a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 with a dissertation examining improvisation and live performance in funk music. His research and teaching focus on African American popular musics and jazz. He is currently working on a book project that proposes a framework called a “post-civil rights era Black popular music aesthetic” to explore how funk music participates in constructions of race, gender, and sexuality in post-1965 Black popular musics. 

He has presented at conferences and meetings of the Society for American Music, the Society for Music Theory, the Experience Music Project, and the Dayton Funk Symposium. His publications have appeared in African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, American Music, and Journal of Popular Music Studies. He also has provided commentary on popular music for the blog Musiqology.com and the podcast Switched on Pop.