Analyzing African Music: Ethnomusicological versus Music-Theoretical Imperatives A highlight of the conference will be the keynote address by Professor Kofi Agawu of Princeton University , and author of African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective and Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music. Agawu, professor of music, works in the areas of music analysis and theory, semiotics and music, music of the 19th century, and West African music. He has diplomas in musicianship, theory and the teaching of singing from the Royal Academy of Music, as well as a 1977 BA from Reading University, a 1978 MMus from Kings's College, London, and a 1982 PhD from Stanford University.
He has been a professor at Princeton since 1995 and was recently a visiting scholar at the University of Ghana. He previously taught at Cornell for six years, at King's College, London for three, at Duke for one and at Haverford College for two years.
Among his many publications are African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective (1995) and Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (1991), which won the 1994 Society for Music Theory Young Scholar Award. A Guggenheim Fellow in 1990-91, Agawu received the 1992 Dent Medal from the Royal Musical Association and the International Musicological Society.