Michael SilversGlobal Educator · Community Builder ·
Arts Advocate · Ethnographic Researcher

I organized my site by the venues in which I work.

On the Page

Book

2018Voices of Drought: The Politics of Music and Environment in Northeastern Brazil — University of Illinois Press.
Reviewed in Ethnomusicology Forum · the world of music · Latin American Music Review · Luso-Brazilian Review.

Articles & Chapters

2025“Pernambuco: Listening for ‘the Very Substance of America’” — in Unsound Supplies: Noisy Matter and the Making of Modern Soundscapes, ed. Gribenski, Pantalony & Tkaczyk. Oxford University Press.
2024“Listening for Drought, Hearing Water: Sound Research for Dry Signals, a Digital Ethnographic Sound Diorama” — in Hingehört! Der Sound des Anthropozäns — Listen! The Sound of the Anthropocene, edited by Michaela Fenske and Susanne Dinkl. Alltag – Kultur – Wissenschaft 11. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
2024“Localizando a alegria queer através da reflexividade” — in Desafios para a Consolidação da Etnomusicologia no Nordeste, ed. Carvalho, Oliveira & Sandroni. São Paulo: Editora Dialética, pp. 39–56.
2022“Pedagogias do ‘Outro’ Musical: Considerações Éticas para Contextos Educacionais nos Estados Unidos e Brasil” — Diálogos Sonoros 1, no. 2: 1–14.
2021“Ethnomusicology as Ecomusicology” — Society for Ethnomusicology Newsletter 55, no. 1: 18–20.
2020“Attending to the Nightingale: On a Multispecies Ethnomusicology” — Ethnomusicology 64, no. 2: 199–224.
2017“Birdsong and a Song about a Bird” — in Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, 2nd edition, ed. Jennifer Post. Routledge, pp. 127–139.Reprint of 2015
2016“On Cultural and Environmental Sustainability: Rabecas, Pífanos, and the Materials of Musical Instruments in Cariri” — in Experiências de Pesquisa em Música no Cariri Cearense, ed. Márcio Mattos. Juazeiro do Norte: Federal University of Ceará Press, pp. 97–106.
2015“Birdsong and a Song about a Bird: Popular Music and the Mediation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Northeastern Brazil” — Ethnomusicology 59, no. 3: 380–397.
2013“Bandas Cabaçais” — in Agrupamentos da Música Tradicional do Cariri Cearense, ed. Mattos & Coopat. Juazeiro do Norte: Federal University of Ceará Press, pp. 143–157.
2011“Maracatunaíma: Musical Semiotics, the Northeastern Imaginary and the Sound of Fortaleza” — with Danielle Maia Cruz. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 8, no. 1: 228–259.

Digital

2022“Making Cultura Popular Brasileira: Experiences in Conversation” — with Muniagurria, Duque & DiFreitas. DIALOGUES, International Council for Traditional Music.
2021“Dry Signals” — invited digital ethnographic sound diorama. Sensate, special issue “Sounds of the Anthropocene.”
2021–Madeira Que Cupim Não Rói — collaborative digital project on rabeca culture in the Cariri.
2018–Sensing Water — curated program series on water and expressive culture, funded by the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative.

Reviews, Proceedings & Other

2022“Madeira que Cupim Não Rói: Etnomusicologia colaborativa de grandes dados” — with Teixeira e Pinho Júnior, Freitas Filho & Mattos. Proceedings, X ENABET, pp. 858–868.
2019“Kuduro” — Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, ed. Heidi Feldman.
2016Review of Enciclopédia da Música em Portugal no Século XX — Ethnomusicology 60, no. 1: 181–182.
2014“Ecomusicology in the News” — Ecomusicology Newsletter 3, no. 1: 18–19.
2013“Ecomusicology in the News” — Ecomusicology Newsletter 2, no. 2: 10–11.
2013“Conference Review: Ecomusicologies 2012” — Ecomusicology Newsletter 2, no. 1: 13.
2013Review of Squeeze This! and The Accordion in the Americas — Yearbook for Traditional Music 45: 261–264.
2013Translation, from the Portuguese: “Maracatu New York,” by Danielle Maia Cruz — Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 37, no. 74: 81–108.
2013Liner notes, Música do Povo Cariri — produced by AVBEM and the Banco do Nordeste do Brasil.
2012“Reviews of Recent Publications” — Ecomusicology Newsletter 1, no. 2: 4–6.
2009Review of Colombie: Nafer Durán, Roi du Vallenato — Yearbook for Traditional Music 41: 246.

On the Screen

On Camera at MIM

Listening to the Sonoran Desert — in the Arizona Instrument Makers gallery.

In Conversation

Making “Cultura Popular Brasileira” — the Madeira team in conversation, ICTMD Dialogues, 2021.

Rabecas do Ceará — the podcast's second season opens with the legacy of Gilmar de Carvalho, 2022.

mtvU Films

Viva São João! — the June festival at full tilt. The filmmaker is in this one, dancing.

Mestres do Mundo — the masters-of-culture gathering at Limoeiro do Norte, April 2010.

Ricardo Bezerra — the composer, in conversation, January 2010.

Orlângelo Leal — and Dona Zefinha's regional rock, March 2010.

Sarau — a poetry-and-music evening in Fortaleza, March 2010.

Eu Sou o Sol — Eletrocactus launch their record at the Theatro José de Alencar, July 2010.

Orós — stills from the reservoir town, November 2009.

In Community

The long collaborations — built with other people, in other places, over years.

Madeira Que Cupim Não Rói

The Madeira work began in the pandemic, when travel to Brazil was impossible. My answer was to direct — and pay — a team of local researchers: Di Freitas and the AVBEM association in Juazeiro do Norte, and Auricélio Ferreira de Souza's students at the Federal Institute in Tauá. Together they mapped the rabequeiros, rabequeiras, and luthiers of Ceará, the players and makers of the Brazilian folk fiddle, the rabeca. The research was designed from the start to be used twice — by me, from home, and by the team that gathered it, for their own work. What it produced: an open research archive, public events with the Federal Institute of Ceará at Tauá, a book of the students' own research, an album, and a podcast.

The Project SiteThe collective's home at the University of Illinois.Visit → Mapeamento dos RabequeirosThe mapping project's Facebook page.Visit →

Memória da Rabeca Brasileira — the podcast's second season (2022), a homage to Dr. Gilmar de Carvalho and the rabeca culture of Ceará. Hosted by Caio Padilha; I conducted interviews and contributed writing.

Listen — Memória da Rabeca Brasileira on Spotify.

The Madeira Que Cupim Não Rói artwork: a rabequeiro in a straw hat bowing an oversized rabeca
The project's artwork. A rabequeiro and his big fiddle, drawn for Madeira Que Cupim Não Rói.
The Madeira Que Cupim Não Rói van, painted with a rabequeiro and the partners' logos
The project van, Juazeiro do Norte, 2023. Painted with the project's rabequeiro and its partners' marks — the University of Illinois, AVBEM, the Federal University of Cariri, and the Federal Institute's Tauá campus.
Freitas speaking on a stage at the Federal University of Cariri, with a video of himself on the screen
Freitas, talking at the Federal University of Cariri, September 2023 — the face on the screen is Freitas too, in a video from before.
Framed portraits of rabequeiros arranged on a couch, wrapped and ready
The mapping, returned. Framed portraits of the players and makers, printed and wrapped to go back to the rabequeiros and their families.
Michael Silvers at the microphone in the Rádio Progresso FM studio
On the radio. At Rádio Progresso FM in Juazeiro do Norte with Di Freitas, September 2023.
A notebook sketch of the mapping site's structure: by map, by theme, by name, by statistics, and a book
Planning the archive. The team's notebook sketch for the mapping site — browse by map, by theme, by name, by statistics — with images of the places and their soundscapes.
The team presenting framed portraits to rabequeiros at the Federal Institute in Tauá
At the Federal Institute in Tauá, September 2023. Presenting the framed portraits to the rabequeiros — Di Freitas at the left, me second from left.
A rabeca trio performing at night on a round lakeside stage before a seated crowd
The public concert. A rabeca trio on the lakeside stage in Tauá, closing the institute's event, September 2023.
Framed portraits on the wall of the Federal Institute auditorium in Tauá while musicians perform on stage
Inside the institute at Tauá. The portraits on the wall, the players on the stage — the mapping exhibited where it was made, September 2023.
A visitor looking at a wall of framed portraits of rabequeiros at the Federal Institute in Tauá
The portrait wall. The mapped rabequeiros and rabequeiras, framed and hung at the Federal Institute in Tauá.
Watch — the lakeside concert in Tauá, September 2023.
Cover of the album Poética da Oralidade: Rabequeiros dos Inhamuns — a blue and tan collage with a rabeca silhouette
The album. Poética da Oralidade: Rabequeiros dos Inhamuns — the Tauá team’s recordings of the region’s mestres, delivered to the musicians on CD in May 2026.
Michael Silvers with three rabequeiros at the Federal Institute in Tauá, two of them holding framed portraits
Portraits, handed over. Rabequeiros at IFCE Tauá holding their framed photographs, September 2023.
Poster for the Madeira seminar in Tauá: Gilmar de Carvalho drawn with wings, holding bells
The seminar poster. The first Seminário Poéticas da Oralidade — Rabequeiros do Sertão dos Inhamuns, honoring Gilmar de Carvalho. Tauá, September 25, 2023.
Three men at microphones in the Rádio Progresso FM studio, Juazeiro do Norte
On the air, wider. The Progresso FM studio, Juazeiro do Norte, September 2023.

In the Field — Brazil

Fieldwork is where the mapping comes from — knocking on doors. In June 2022, traveling with Di Freitas, the trail led to the Ceará house of Mestre Gil Chagas — rabeca maker, kinetic sculptor, once a furniture maker — and to the Crato workshop of Aécio Ramos, whose wall is all rabecas. Then out into the street for the June festivals, days before the São José dos Campos exhibition opened.

A performer in a folk-drama costume: a fierce mask with teeth, a shaggy wig, and a patched brown coat
In costume. A folk-drama figure, masked and patched, May 2022.
A turquoise house in Ceará under a banner reading Mestre da Cultura do Estado do Ceará
The house of Mestre Gil Chagas. His banner says it plainly: Mestre da Cultura do Estado do Ceará — a master of culture of the state of Ceará. June 3, 2022.
Michael Silvers, masked, holding one of the mestre's large wooden rabecas outside the house
Me, with the rabeca I bought from Gil Chagas — big-bodied, plainly finished, and built to be played.
A hand-built wooden marble machine on a plywood table
Also his work: kinetic sculpture — a wooden marble machine, every ramp and wheel cut by hand. Gil Chagas made furniture before all this.
Watch — more of his kinetic sculpture: a wooden folk diorama, its little figures at work and at prayer, all in motion.
A home wall covered with rabecas of every shape: butterfly, round, gourd, and fiddle forms
Aécio's wall. Decades of rabecas — butterfly, round, gourd-bodied, square — hung rail over rail.
Close-up of rabecas on a rail, one with fish-shaped soundholes
Up close — fish cut into the soundholes, pegs like handles, nothing wasted.
A photographer taking the maker's portrait in his yard as he holds a rabeca made from a plastic gallon jug
The mapping, in person. Aécio poses with his rabeca built from a plastic gallon jug while the project's photographer takes his portrait, June 19, 2022.
Watch — Aécio Ramos plays, at home in Crato, June 19, 2022.
Watch — a pífano band in the street: two flutes, zabumba, and caixa on a June night, 2022.
Watch — the brass band passes, and the festival's giant puppet hangs over the street.
A luthier's workshop in Ceará: the maker in a straw hat, Michael in a striped shirt, and a long-haired colleague among shelves of fiddle parts
In a luthier's workshop, July 2019. The maker at his bench (left), me (center), and Di Freitas (right) — scrolls, half-built fiddles, and glue on every shelf.
A craftsman in a yellow striped shirt holding a long length of pale wood, drum shells stacked behind him
The raw material. A craftsman holds a length of pale wood in his workshop; drum shells cure behind him. July 2019.
Watch — Di Freitas plays a homemade monochord — one string, a stick, and a slider. July 2019.
Michael Silvers standing before the colossal statue of Padre Cícero in Juazeiro do Norte, in a souvenir print dated 26/07/2019
The souvenir portrait. Beneath the statue of Padre Cícero on the Colina do Horto, Juazeiro do Norte, July 26, 2019.

Sensing Water

Sensing Water (2018– ) is my curated series of arts and humanities programs on water and expressive culture, funded by a $50,000 University of Illinois Presidential Initiative grant — “Hearing the Ocean, Seeing the Rain.” It follows the sound of water, its presence and its absence, from the Brazilian sertão to the American Southwest: visiting scholars and artists (Cara Stacey, on water, drought, and song in eSwatini), new work, a student-built Central Illinois Sound Survey — and Dry Signals, the drought sound diorama that lives under In the Gallery.

Sensing WaterThe project's site at the University of Illinois.Visit →

In the Classroom

Courses taught and programs built — for students from six to a hundred.

A student's hand holding a blue PVC flute with drilled finger holes over a workshop floor of tools and cardboard
An instrument-building class. PVC flutes — measured, cut, and drilled by hand.
Michael Silvers pointing to a projected exhibit image before a seated audience at the Musical Instrument Museum
A MIM Talk in session. The talk first — then a tour of the galleries on the same thread.
MIM Talks poster: Music and Mothers, Tuesday May 5, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
The poster for one of them. Music and Mothers — a May talk on music made by, for, and about mothers.

Courses Taught

University of Illinois, 2013–2024

  • FAA 110 — Exploring Arts and Creativity
  • MUS 110 — Introduction to Art Music: International Perspectives
  • MUS 133 — Introduction to Planetary Music
  • MUS 252/450 — Brazilian Armorial Ensemble
  • MUS 414 — Music and Animals
  • MUS 416 / ANTH 416 — Anthropology of Music and Sound
  • MUS 418 — Regional Studies in Musicology: Music of Brazil · Popular Musics of Africa · Music of the Lusophone World · Jewish Music in Global Contexts
  • MUS 512 — Foundations and Methods of Musicology II: Introduction to Ethnomusicology
  • MUS 514 — World Music Pedagogy
  • MUS 520 — Social Theory for Music and Sound Studies
  • MUS 522 — Latin American Art Music · Grant Writing for Music Fields
  • MUS 523 — Seminars in Musicology: Musical Instruments and Society · Music and Ecology · Music, Gender, and Sexuality · Music, Improvisation, and Ecology · Theorizing Timbre

As Musicology Area Chair (2022–24), I also shaped the curriculum those courses live in — across the BA, BME, MM, DMA, and PhD.

My students, singing — the Brazilian Armorial Ensemble performs “Incelença da Chuva,” May 2018.

Earlier classrooms

  • Lecturer — UCLA & UC Riverside, 2012–13 — Music and Religion · Music of Latin America · Global Pop

Honduras, 2004–05 — the first classroom

General music teacher, grades 2–6, at the Escuela Internacional Sampedrana in San Pedro Sula — a 600-student international school, taught in English, the year before the PhD.

I threw out the textbook — quizzes on Beethoven’s birthday — and taught in a circle instead: folk songs together, and units on punta and reggaeton, the Beatles, and jazz history. Over Christmas I read A. S. Neill’s Summerhill and Paulo Freire, and came back with the room rearranged into learning centers: one where children took a tape recorder to ask the lunch ladies for songs from their childhood, then transcribed the lyrics — little ethnographic researchers — alongside stations for inventing their own notation, composing, and simply making noise. The sixth graders, who needed more structure, turned the Orff instruments into a gamelan.

The year ended in a rented theater with The Wizard of Oz: sixth graders in the leads, third graders as munchkins — and as set designers, their crayon drawings enlarged for the stage. When the accompanist didn’t show on the night, I accompanied the show myself. Some of those students still look me up.

Programs Developed

At the Musical Instrument Museum, 2024–

  • MIM Talks — the museum's adult talk series
  • World Choir Workshops — a monthly community choir
  • Studio Recital Program — for young musicians
  • Music and Wellness and Great Guitars — two of the museum's three adult tours
  • Afternoon Interludes — a Friday-afternoon pop-up concert: remarkable local artists, from singer-songwriter Walt Richardson, who sometimes improvises songs on the spot, to performers from the Arizona Opera and a string quartet
  • Fiestas: Latin America — a seventh school field-trip type, created; the existing six retooled
  • Junior Museum Guides — reimagined for high school students
  • Signature Event topics new to MIM — Experience Korea · Celebrate Reggae · Celebrate Soul · Celebrate Global Jazz · Spotlight on Children's Music · Celebrate Mariachi — and December reframed as Joy to the World
  • Poetry & Music at MIM — an OLLI course co-taught with Rosemarie Dombrowski, Phoenix's first poet laureate

Earlier

  • Os Kuduristas — co-directed the education program, Luanda and Brooklyn, 2012

About

I am an educator and ethnomusicologist who likes to make cool things happen. I grew up in Tucson, lived in Maine, Honduras, Los Angeles, Brazil, and Champaign-Urbana, and now work in Phoenix — back home in the desert.

At UCLA I wrote a dissertation on music and drought in Ceará; at the University of Illinois, where I taught for eleven years and chaired the musicology area, that work became Voices of Drought and a small constellation of projects in the Cariri. A Carnegie Fellowship let me spend years on the materials of music — the pernambuco of violin bows, the woods of the rabeca. When the pandemic made travel impossible, I directed and paid a team of local researchers there, building the research so both sides could use it — their publications and events alongside mine.

Since 2024 I have been Curator of Education at the Musical Instrument Museum, where I created the museum's adult education programming — talks, choir workshops, tours, and events that treat music as something a community does together. My talks play a lot of music and end, more often than not, with everybody singing.

I have taught students from age six to age one hundred. I play accordion terribly and banjo even worse. I’m a baritone. I enjoy spending time with my rabbits.

Across Time

Seven stops, one through-line.

c. 1990Tucson

A school choir on stage, children in white shirts mid-song, their teacher at the keyboard

School choir — the first ensemble. That’s me front and center, white tee, mid-song.

2002College

Michael singing in the Bates College choir, music folder in hand

Thriller — the Bates Deansmen, my college a cappella group, on Icelandic television.

The senior thesis — Cantata do Cangaceiro, a 45-minute cantata I composed from a Brazilian literatura de cordel about Lampião, scored for full orchestra and choir, with two flutes in harmony like pífanos, an accordion part, and a triangle. Performed to a packed house.

Hear it — the live concert recording, all ten movements:

  1. 1 · a banda de pífano 3:51
  2. 2 · Lampião 2:40
  3. 3 · fez justiça 3:52
  4. 4 · a burguesa 4:03
  5. 5 · roupa, comida, e dinheiro 2:19
  6. 6 · honra e gloria 3:03
  7. 7 · a perseguição 7:07
  8. 8 · 3 tiros 3:56
  9. 9 · Maria Bonita 4:08
  10. 10 · azulão 6:08

From the same concert — the welcome, the opener, and the packed house at the end:

  1. Welcoming comments 2:29
  2. Asa Branca 4:33
  3. Applause 0:35

2009–10Fortaleza

Viva São João! — Fortaleza, filming on a Fulbright-mtvU fellowship. I'm in this one, dancing.

c. 2010Grad school

Pajdusko Horo — Orkestar Balkan, the Bulgarian wedding band from my UCLA years. I’m on accordion.

2019The workshops

Michael in a striped shirt in a Ceará luthier's workshop, July 2019

Ceará, July 2019 — in a luthier's workshop, on the Carnegie-funded rabeca research.

2022Back in the field

Michael holding the large wooden rabeca he bought from Mestre Gil Chagas

The rabeca from Gil Chagas — bought from the maker at his house, June 2022.

NowPhoenix

Listening to the Sonoran Desert — at the Musical Instrument Museum, where I work now.

Contact

michaelbsilvers@gmail.com

CV

The short version. The full curriculum vitae is a PDF, below.

Education

  • PhD, Ethnomusicology — UCLA, 2012
  • MM, Musicology — University of Arizona, 2007
  • BA, Music — Bates College, 2004

Positions

  • Curator of Education — Musical Instrument Museum, 2024–
  • Associate Professor of Music — University of Illinois, 2013–2024 (Chair, Musicology Area, 2022–24)
  • Lecturer — UCLA & UC Riverside, 2012–13
  • General Music Teacher — Escuela Internacional Sampedrana, Honduras, 2004–05

Selected Fellowships & Grants

  • Andrew Carnegie Fellow, 2019
  • Fulbright Scholar, Brazil · Fulbright-mtvU Fellow, 2009
  • ACLS · NEH · Humanities Without Walls (co-PI)
  • $538,000+ in research funding across my career

Leadership & Service

  • Convened Sound Methods for a New World, UIUC, 2023
  • Co-convener (with Carlos Carrillo) of the Puerto Rican music conference
  • Coordinator of the Musicology Colloquia, as Musicology Area Chair
  • NEH review panelist · Graduate fellowship committees
  • MIM's representative, PVCC President's Community Advisory Council
Download the full CV (PDF)

The complete publication list lives under On the Page.