Michael Largey

ABOUT

Michael Largey is Professor of Musicology at the Michigan State University College of Music.

Largey is an ethnomusicologist and folklorist who writes about the music and culture of Haiti, specifically Haitian classical and religious music. He teaches courses in Caribbean music, South Asian music, East Asian music, ethnographic fieldwork, world music, and historical musicology.

Largey is the author of Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism (University of Chicago Press, 2006), which was a co-winner of the 2007 Alan Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology for the most distinguished book in the field of ethnomusicology. Largey is also a co-author with Peter Manuel of the third edition of Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Temple University Press, 2016). The first edition of Caribbean Currents (co-authored by Peter Manuel and Kenneth Bilby) won the 1996 Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship from the Caribbean Studies Association and was a 1996 Choice Outstanding Academic Book. His most recent book is Haitians in Michigan (Michigan State University Press, 2010).

Largey received the William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award from MSU in 2019; the MSU Excellence in Diversity Award for Advancing Global Competency in 2018; the Fintz Award for Teaching Excellence in the Arts and Humanities from MSU in 2012; the Dortha J. and John D. Withrow Award for Excellence in Teaching from the MSU College of Music in 2010; and the MSU Teacher-Scholar Award for outstanding teaching and research in 1998. He was also a Lilly Teaching Fellow in 1996-97 and has served several times as a mentor for colleagues in the Lilly Teaching Fellow program.

Largey received an AB in history and music at Bowdoin College (cum laude, magna cum laude in music), and MA and PhD degrees in folklore and ethnomusicology from Indiana University.

Books:
Vodou Nation
Sun, Sea, and Sound
Haitians in Michigan
Caribbean Currents
Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean