Josh Kun: The Art of the Crossfade: Music, Archives, and California

The American Music Research Center and the Center of the American West were proud to present a public talk with Professor Josh Kun.

Josh uses the DJ method of crossfading to explore and animate historic sheet music, vinyl LPs, and restaurant menus as tools in addressing contemporary issues of gentrification, urban redevelopment, and racial inequality, among others.

He is a 2016 MacArthur Fellow and the winner of a 2018 Berlin Prize and a 2006 American Book Award. His research focuses on the arts and politics of cultural connection, with an emphasis on popular music, sound, the cultures of globalization, the US-Mexico border, Los Angeles, and Jewish-American musical history. He also works as a journalist, essayist, and curator.

He is the Director of the Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center and co-editor (with Ron Radano and Nina Sun Eidsheim) of the book series Refiguring American Music for Duke University Press. He co-curates Crossfade Lab, a conversation and performance series that occurs across multiple sites in Phoenix, Arizona. He founded the USC Annenberg Distinguished Lecture Series on Latin American Arts & Culture. He serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Communication, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Public Culture.

We hope you joined us as Josh discussed how artifacts from the California past help us to imagine new California futures.