Dr. Sydney Hutchinson - Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung - Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Research Associate

• Since November 2025: Research Associate at the State Institute for Music Research
• 2020-2025: Research assistant at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institute for Musicology and Media Studies, Popular Music Studies
• 2019-2020: Substitute professor for ethnomusicology, Goethe University
• 2017-2021: Associate Professor for Music History and Cultures, Syracuse University
• 2010-2017: Assistant Professor for Music History and Cultures, Syracuse University
• 2009-2010: Humboldt Fellow, Ethnological Museum, Berlin
• 2008: Ph.D, Music (Ethnomusicology), New York University
• 2002: M.A., Ethnomusicology/Folklore, Indiana University
• 1996: B.Music, Piano Performance, University of Arizona

Monographs, editorships and translations

• Queering Partner Dance (Bloomsbury, forthcoming), ed. with Val Meneau
• Tigres de otro pelaje: Interpretando el género en la música dominicana (translation of Tigers of a different stripe. Santo Domingo, Ministry of Culture/Instituto de Estudios Caribeños, 2024)
• Made in Saturn, by Rita Indiana, translation by Sydney Hutchinson (And Other Stories, 2020)
• FOCUS: Music of the Caribbean (Routledge, 2019)
• Rhythm and Power: Performing Salsa in Puerto Rican and Latino Communities. (CENTRO Press, 2017), ed. with Derrick León Washington and Priscilla Renta.
• Tigers of a Different Stripe: The Performance of Gender in Dominican Music. (University of Chicago Press, 2016) (*Society for Ethnomusicology, Marcia Herndon Award)
• Salsa World: A Global Dance in Local Contexts, editor. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012).
• From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth Culture. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007) (*Society for Dance History Scholars, De La Torre Bueno Book Prize, Special Citation)

• "From House to House: Kurt Reinhard, Erich Stockmann, and the Berlin Phonogram Archive in the shadow of the Berlin wall." 2025. Twentieth-Century Music, DOI: https: //doi.org/10.1017/S1478572225100108
• "Triangle or onion? The Bermudian gombey tradition at the crossroads of the Black and Red Atlantics." Journal of Festive Studies, forthcoming
• "Cooperation, competition, and Cold War thinking in German music studies of the 1950s and 1960s." 2024 Die Musikforschung 77(4): 311-332.
• "Norteño corporeality: Body, gender, sound, and economy in commercialised norteño music videos." 2022. Popular Music and Society 45(3):317-240. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2022.2043427
• "Dancing lo típico: A choreomusical perspective on merengue." 2020 World of Music (new series) 9(2):89-108.
• "Beyond the binary of choreomusicology: Moving from ethnotheory towards local ontologies. "2020. Co-authored with Made Mantle Hood, World of Music (new series) 9(2):69-88.
• "Asian fury: A tale of race, rock, and air guitar." 2016 Ethnomusicology 60(3): 411-433.
• "Entangled rhythms on a conflicted island: Digging up the buried histories of Dominican folk music." 2016 Resonancias 20(39): 139-154.
• "Putting some air on their chests: Movement and masculinity in competitive air guitar." 2014. world of music (new series) 3(2):79-103.
• "A limp with rhythm: Convergent choreographies in Black Atlantic time." 2012 Yearbook for Traditional Music 44:87-108.
• "Típico, folklórico, or popular? Musical categories, place, and identity in a transnational listening community." 2011 Popular Music 30(2):245-262.
• "Introduction," Special Issue, "Latin American Dance in Transnational Contexts." 2009 Journal of American Folklore 122(486).
• "Becoming the tíguera: Female accordionists in Dominican merengue típico." 2008. World of Music, 50(3): 37-56.
• "Merengue típico: Transnational regionalism and class transformations in a neotraditional Dominican music." 2006 Ethnomusicology 50(1):37-72.
• "Mambo on 2: The birth of a new form of dance in New York City." 2004 CENTRO Journal 16(2):109-137.

• "Sonic solidarities: Latin American political song in East Germany." In editing. Music, culture, and politics in Latin America, eds. Christian Spencer and Laura Jordan. Routledge.
• Commentary on "Aspekte zum Problem der musikologischen Ethnographie" by Max Peter Baumann. (in German) Scope, method and aim. An annotated edition of conceptions of musicology, edited by Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann. Kassel and Berlin: Bärenreiter/Metzler.

• "Salsa in India: A (queer) dance by chance," with Subhashish Mandal and "Queering partner dance: An introduction," with Val Meneau. (forthcoming) Queering Partner Dance, ed. Val Meneau and Sydney Hutchinson. Bloomsbury.

• "Ghost transnationalisms, or how buried transborder histories are embodied in music and dance (with examples from the Dominican Republic and the United States)." 2025. Transnational Humans and Transnationalism in the Humanities: Crossing Boundaries in the Americas, ed. Max Paul Friedman, Stefan Rinke, and Nuria Vilanova. University of New Mexico Press.

• "Memory Culture or Forgetting Culture? Merengue, monuments, and memory in the Dominican Republic." 2024. music and memory, ed. Michael Fuhr, Olms, 117-137.

• "On carnivals and capitalism: Performing neoliberal politics in a Dominican carnival." 2024. The Routledge Companion to the Anthropology of Performance, ed. Lauren Griffith and David Syring. New York: Routledge.
• "On social dancing and social movements: Salsa and resistance." 2017. Rhythm and power: Performing salsa in Latino communities, edited by Derrick León Washington, Priscilla Renta, and Sydney Hutchinson. New York: CENTRO Press.
• "Una propuesta transgenérica de la música de Rita Indiana: El potencial transformador de sus canciones y videoclips, y el compromiso de leer/escuchar 'entre líneas/pa'l la'o'." 2017 Rita Indiana: Archivos, ed. Fernanda Bustamante E. Santo Domingo/Berlin: Cielo Naranja, 351-385
• "Merengue on the move: Making music, place, and community in the típico world." 2016 Made in Latin America: Studies in Popular Music, ed. Christian Spencer and Julio Mendívil. New York: Routledge, 113-124
• "Outsider, insider, and imagined tourists: Some notes on musical and cultural tourism in the Dominican Republic." 2014 Sun, Sea, and Sound: Reflections on Music and Tourism in the Circum-Caribbean, ed. Daniel Neely and Timothy Rommen, 151-178
• "Dancing in place: An introduction" and "What's in a number? From local nostalgia to global marketability in New York salsa." 2013 Salsa World, ed. Sydney Hutchinson. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1-25, 26-45.
• "No ma' se oye el fuinfuán: The noisy accordion in the Dominican Republic." 2012 The Accordion in the Americas - Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco and More! ed. Helena Simonett. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 249-267
• "Breaking borders / quebrando fronteras: Dancing in the borderscape." 2011. transnational encounters. Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border, ed. Alejandro Madrid. Oxford University Press.
• "Places of the body: Corporeal displacement, misplacement, and replacement in music and dance research." 2010 Music and displacement: Diasporas, mobilities, and dislocations, ed. Erik Levi and Florian Scheding. Scarecrow Press, 155-180
• "The Ballet Folklórico de México and the construction of the Mexican nation through dance." 2009. n Dancing across borders: Danzas y bailes mexicanos, ed. Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Brenda Romero, and Norma Cantú. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 206-225.

• Popscriptum, "Intersections in the Interregnum" (with Stefanie Alisch and Shanti Suki Osman), vol. 13 (2025)
  https://www.musikundmedien.hu-berlin.de/de/musikwissenschaft/pop/popscriptum-1/intersections-in-the-interregnum
• World of Music (new series), special issue: Music, movement, and masculinities (with Marcia Ostashewski), vol. 2 no. 2 (2014)
• Journal of American Folklore, special issue: Latin American Dance (with Katey Borland), vol. 122 no. 486 (2009)
• Yearbook of Traditional Music, book review editor (2011-2016)

• "Música de la Isla," Edis Sánchez, Pantopia Music (2023): Curator, translator, author
  https://pantopia-music.org/en/album/musica-de-la-isla/
• "La India Canela: Merengue típico of the Dominican Republic." Smithsonian Folkways Records (2008): Co-producer, author
  https://folkways.si.edu/la-india-canela/merengue-tipico-from-the-dominican-republic/caribbean-latin-world/music/album/smithsonian

• "Musical Internationalism," curator for part of the exhibition "Across Borders," Humboldt Forum (2024-2025)
• "Fusión Caribe," co-curator, La Casita Cultural Centre, Syracuse University (2017)
• "Dominican Republic," Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, Arizona (film material and information about instrument making; ongoing)
• "A tres bandas. Mestizaje, sincretismo e hibridación en el espacio sonoro hispanoamericano (s. XVI-s. XX)", Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior (SEACEX)/ Museo de Antioquia, Colombia (consultant/contributor, 2010)

• "Playing the Archive" podcast,https://blubrry.com/3887913/
• Youtube/Tiktok/Instagram video series, "Second World Music"https://www.youtube.com/@secondworldmusic9159
• "Second World Music" homepage and blog
  http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com

Invited

2024: "Performing socialist solidarity: Mass culture, mass media, and mass sentiment in East Germany." University of Music and Theatre, Hanover, May

2023: "GDR Radio's International Connections Department." Conference, Sound and Vision: 100 years of the BBC in Berlin, Humboldt University, Centre for British Studies, June

2022: "Beyond Lead and Follow: Gender Roles, Dance, and Society from Colonised Latin America to Cold War Europe (and Beyond)." Keynote, Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, Fachgruppensymposium Deutsch-Ibero-Amerikanische Musikbeziehung/Gender, September

2022: "A tale of two Germanys: Music and music collections across borders during German separation." Conference, North Korean music library in the National Gugak Centre and prospects for its use. National Gugak Centre, Seoul (Zoom), December

2021: "Saturnalia: On music, translation, and Rita Indiana's Made in Saturn." Conference "Music and Translation", Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, October

2021: "Yodel is as yodel does," Symposium "Musik als Wissensmachine" (online), Humboldt University, March

2019: "US Dominican Women: Music and Legacy," panel discussion, Dominican Studies Institute (City University of New York), November

2019: "Gendered genres: The performing body in competitive air guitar and Dominican merengue típico." Institute for Musicology and Media Studies, Guest Lecture Series, Humboldt University, July

2018: "Gombeys, goombays, and guloyas: A view from the Hispanic Caribbean." Bermuda Gombey Festival, Hamilton, Bermuda, October

2018: "A sea of sounds and silences: Black Atlantic politics and new identities in Dominican pop." Goethe University, July

2017: "Salsa and/as resistance." Bard College, November

2017: "Listening to Rita Indiana: Gender, music, and performance at the crossroads." William P. Tolley University Faculty Dinner Forum, Syracuse University, September

2017: "On social dancing and social movements: Salsa and resistance." Keynote, Symposium When the People Dance: Salsa, Power, and Performance in New York City, Museum of the City of New York, September

2015: "Entangled rhythms on a conflicted island: Digging up the buried histories of Dominican music." Symposium "Music of the Americas," Cornell University, September

2015: "Asian fury: A tale of race, rock, and air guitar." Brown University, Music Department, February

2014: "A tigress of a different stripe: Performing gender in Dominican music from Fefita to Rita." University of Göttingen, ZTMK Guest Lecture Series, July

2014: "A tigress of a different stripe." Colloquium, Princeton University, Music Department, March

2012: "Con merengue y con bachata." Panel discussion, Sixth Annual Dominican Students Conference, Brown University, April

2012: "Música folklórica en Samaná." Centro León, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, March

2011: "¿Fue el merengue típico el primer jazz dominicano? Un análisis de técnicas compartidas." Plenary session, Música, Identidad, y Cultura en el Caribe (MIC) IV, Santiago, Dominican Republic, April

2009: Colombian vallenato, World Cinema Fund Spotlight, film screening, "Los Viajes del Viento," Berlin, November

2025: "World Music and Second World Musicology: The East Berlin Festival of Political Song as a Bridge between the Blocks." Annual conference, Society for Music Research (GfM), Weimar, October

2025: "Global pop and the Eastern Bloc: Rene Dubianski's life and music." International Council for Traditional Music and Dance (ICTMD), Global History of Music study group, Berlin, September

2024: "Dance the revolution! East Germans and Cuban dance during the early Cold War (1955-1965)." Annual conference, Society for Ethnomusicology (online).

2024: "Cooperating over the wall: Kurt Reinhard, Erich Stockmann, and the Berlin Phonogram Archive in the Cold War." Conference: Cosmopolitan, International, Global: Music, Archives and Politics in East and West Berlin since 1963, Humboldt-Forum, 3-5 July.

2022: "'All the young people are dancing': Socialism vs. social dance in the German Democratic Republic." Poster, International Council for Traditional Music. Ethnochoreology Study Group (online), 1 August.

2022: "Whose 'world music'? Popular music and internationalism between Latin America and the German Democratic Republic." Annual Conference, International Council for Traditional Music, Lisbon, 22 July

2021: "Choreomusical research perspectives," panel discussion, annual conference, Society for Ethnomusicology (online), 28 October

2021: "Culture of memory or culture of forgetting? Music, memory, and monuments in the Dominican Republic." International Council for Traditional Music - Germany, Berlin, Humboldt-Forum, 8 October

2020: "Bermuda gombey (re)connections: Recovering indigeneity in the Black Atlantic." Conference: Racialisation and publicness in Africa and the African Diaspora conference, Oxford University, 27 June

2021-2027: German Research Foundation "own position"

2019: Thyssen Foundation, travel grant

2018: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Return Fellowship

2013-2014: American Association of University Women, Research Fellowship

2010: Grammy Foundation, Preservation Planning for the Fradique Lizardo Collection, Centro León, Dominican Republic (lead author)

2009-2010: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Postdoctoral Fellowship

2008: Nadia and Nicholas Nahumck Fellowship, Society for Ethnomusicology

2008: City Institute of New York, Dominican Studies Institute Summer Research Fellowship

2006: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, Parsons Fellowship

2003-2008: New York University, MacCracken Fellowship

1998-2000: Indiana University, Folklore Institute, Mentored Research Fellowship

2025: Society for Ethnomusicology, Bruno Nettl Prize (Honourable Mention) for "Cooperation, competition, and Cold War thinking in German music studies of the 1950s-1960s"

2017: Society for Ethnomusicology, Marcia Herndon Book Prize for Tigers of a Different Stripe

2016: Syracuse University, Judith Seinfeld Distinguished Faculty Fellow

2016: Samuel Claro Valdés Prize for Latin American Musicology (awarded by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

2010: Society for Ethnomusicology, Marcia Herndon Article Prize for "Becoming the tíguera"

2008: Society of Dance History Scholars, De La Torre Bueno Book Prize (Special Citation) for From Quebradita to Duranguense

• Books: Oxford University Press, University of Rochester Press, University of Arizona Press, University of Mississippi Press, Routledge
• Articles: Ethnomusicology, Yearbook for Traditional Music, Latin American Music Review, Dance Research Journal, Women and Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of the Society for American Music, Latin American Research Review, Latino Studies, Atlantic Studies, Anthropologica, El Oído Pensante, Music and Politics, Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana
• Research proposals: European Council, Research Council of Norway, Austrian Science Fund, Research Council of Hungary

• Current: SOAS Studies in Music (Routledge); Journal of Ethnology
• Formerly: Voices: The Journal for New York Folklore (New York Folklore Society); Pantopia Music (Ethnologisches Museum/Staatstheater Karlsruhe); Dominican Studies Institute; New York State Council on the Arts (Folk Arts Division); El Oído Pensante

• Second World Music