Essays
“Performance and Ethnography.” Keynote Address to the Southern Plains Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology at the University of North Texas, 2009. An earlier version was presented in 1990 at the Performance International Conference, Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Also published as “Acts of Faith: Performance and Ethnography,” in First of the Month: A Website of the Radical Imagination (April 2018). <PDF>
“Music and Historical Consciousness among the Dagbamba of Ghana,” in Enchanting Powers: Music in the World’s Religions. Edited by Lawrence Sullivan. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions and Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 91-120. Also in Approaches to African Musics. Edited by Enrique Cámara de Landa and Silvia Martínez García. Valladolid: University of Valladolid, Centro Buendia, 2006, pp. 137-68. <PDF>
“Ideas of Culture and the Challenge of Music,” a revised version of an essay originally published in Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines. Edited by Jeremy MacClancy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. <PDF>
“Spiritual_Foundations_of_Dagbamba_Religion_and_Culture.” Authorized version of the essay. <PDF>
“Art and Music in Modern Africa.” Carnegie Magazine 61, no. 6 (november/december 1992): 9-10. <PDF>
Recording notes
“Goonji (Fiddle) Music in Dagbon.” Notes and Recordings for Master Fiddlers of Dagbon. Rounder Records 5086 (2001).
“Dagbamba Drumming Music.” Notes and Recordings for Master Drummers of Dagbon, vols 1 and 2. Rounder Records 5016 (1984, 1992) and 5046 (1992).
Reviews
“The Stones Ethnographers Trip Over: Thoughts on Colin Turnbull's The Forest People.” <PDF file> Translated into German as “Die Stolpersteine der Ethnographen,” in Wegmarken: Eine Bibliotek der Ethnologische Imagination. Trickster Jahrbuch. Munich: Peter Hammer Verlag, 1998, pp. 22-28. Reprinted in “Ethnographic Highs: The Forest People and African Rhythm and African Sensibility,” by John Chernoff and T. David Brent, in First of the Month (April 2012): http://www.firstofthemonth.org/ethnographic-highs-the-forrest-people-african-rhythm-and-african-sensibility/. The essay by T. David Brent about African Rhythm and African Sensibility is “Heartbeat.”
“Paul Berliner's The Soul of Mbira Twenty Years On: A Retrospect.” African Music 7, no. 3 (1996): 91-95. <PDF>
“Review of Michael Jackson, Life Within Limits: Well-Being in a World of Want.” Africa 82, no.4 (2012): 671-673. <PDF>
“Review of Gage Averill, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey.” Research in African Literatures 32, no.2 (summer 2001): 202-204. <PDF>
Review of David Coplan, In Township Tonight! (1986). <PDF>
Excerpts from Hustling Is Not Stealing and Exchange Is Not Robbery
“Cities as the Heavens of This Earth,” from the Introduction, Hustling Is Not Stealing: Stories of an African Bar Girl. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 45-62. <PDF>
“A Bad Sickness, an excerpt from Hustling Is Not Stealing.” Introduction by Benj DeMott. First of the Month 4, no. 1 (6.1.2002), 17-19. <PDF>
“Issahaku and the Fulani Thieves,” from Exchange Is Not Robbery: More Stories of an African Bar Girl. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 214-21. <PDF>
“Tales of Groove,“ from Exchange Is Not Robbery: 232-42. <PDF>
“William and Abena , an excerpt from Hustling Is Not Stealing.” Introduction by Benj DeMott. First of the Month 6, no. 1 (winter 2004), 15-17. <PDF>
“A Nice Prison in Togo,” from Hustling Is Not Stealing: 402-40. <PDF>
“The Big Fight in the Family,” from Exchange Is Not Robbery: 197-213. <PDF>