Background
Feld was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1949.
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Steven Feld
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He graduated with a Bachelor cum laude at Hofstra University in anthropology in 1971. His work there fulfilled his dissertation (later published as Sound and Sentiment) for his Doctor of Philosophy from Indiana University in 1979 (in anthropology/linguistics/ethnomusicology).
Career
He earned a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991. He first went to the Bosavi territory in 1976, accompanied by anthropologist Edward L. Schieffelin, whose recordings of the Bosavi inspired him to pursue this work. Feld later returned several times in the 1980s and 1990s to Papua New Guinea to research Bosavi song, rainforest ecology, and cultural poetics.
He has also made briefer research visits to various locations in Europe.
He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Pennsylvania. He is currently (since 2003) a professor of anthropology and music at the University of New Mexico.
Since 2001, he has also held a visiting appointment at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen, Norway, as a professor of world music In 2002, he founded the VoxLox label, "documentary sound art advocates for human rights and acoustic ecology." His most recent book Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra (2012) is based on five years of research and collaboration in Accra, Ghana.
He is also a musician, and he has been active in the New Mexican music scene since the 1970s.
Some of Feld"s recordings are sampled on the track, "Kaluli Groove" on the 2007 album Global Drum Project by Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju, and Giovanni Hidalgo.
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Born
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Nationality
United States