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Hope Munro Smith
Hope Munro Smith earned her PhD in Ethnomusicology from the
University of Texas at Austin in 2001. Her dissertation is based on
fieldwork conducted in Trinidad and Tobago from 1998-1999. Her
work focuses on the Afro-Caribbean popular song genres calypso and soca,
as well as the music of the Trinidad steel band. Her
work also explores the involvement of women musicians in these musical practices
and how music and gender intersect in this cultural environment. She
is particularly interested in how popular music assists various groups of
people form key symbols of cultural identity as well as assist in overcoming
economic and gender-based oppression.
Smith is also an accomplished musician, and has played in a variety of musical
ensembles. These include the University of Vermont Symphony Orchestra,
Dartmouth College’s Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble and West African Drumming
Ensemble, the University of Texas’s Gamelan Kyahi Rosowibowo, the University
of Texas Brazilian and Afro-Caribbean Ensembles, and she was a founding member
of the University of Texas Steelband.