Research Expertise and Interest

performance studies, interracial musical collaboration, music of enslaved Africans in the U.S. and Caribbean, intercultural percussion performance, women's drumming communities, diaspora connection in African American and Afro-Caribbean folkloric traditions, queer and trans popular music making, technology and politics of spiritual musical practice

Research Description

T. Carlis Roberts is an associate professor in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley.  He is a scholar, teacher, and artist devoted to exploring the aesthetic, political, and spiritual potential of performance. His research investigates the connections between sound and social identities, centering on marginalized histories of popular and folk music in the Americas. Specific interests include: interracial musical collaboration, music of enslaved Africans in the U.S. and Caribbean, intercultural percussion performance, women’s drumming communities, diasporic connections in African American and Afro-Caribbean folkloric traditions, queer and trans popular music making, and the technology and politics of spiritual musical practice. In all, his work engages how music is used to construct individual identities and communities–often of seemingly disparate individuals–while at the same time holding the potential to render our lives more complexly than static labels of race, gender, sexuality, etc. In addition to written scholarship, Prof. Roberts's research agenda includes composition, sound design, and performances in music, theater, television, dance, and film.