Christopher Waterman

Professor

Department: World Arts & Cultures

Department of World Arts & Cultures
11000 Kinross Avenue
Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1608
Tel: (310)825-3951
cwater@arts.ucla.edu
Personal Website

Keywords: Africa, African Diaspora, Art, Cultural anthropology, Dance, Music, Religion

Waterman is an anthropologist with interests in the music, performing arts, and cultures of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. He has conducted extensive fieldwork among the Yorùbá people of Nigeria and has begun to conduct research on the cultural life of West African immigrants in Los Angeles. Waterman is the author of Jùjú: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music (University of Chicago Press, 1990) and other publications on popular culture and music in Africa and the United States, and co-author of American Popular Music from Minstrelsy to MTV (in press, Oxford University Press). He is a professional bassist, and has performed with Zoot Sims, the Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey orchestras, I.K. Dairo MBE and the Blue Spots, Dumi Maraire, and Chatta Addy. Before coming to UCLA, Waterman was Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Washington, where he served as Head of the Ethnomusicology Division and Chair of the African Studies Committee. Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; B.Mus., Berklee College of Music.