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Staff Profile

Professor Nanette De Jong

Prof of Socially Engaged Ethnomusicology

Research

Research Interests


When hired at Newcastle, my work focussed primarily on Caribbean music, Black American jazz, and African-diasporic identity. I continue to publish in these areas (most recently as editor of the Cambridge Companion of Caribbean Music); however, after receiving a Fulbright Fellowship to South Africa (in 2006), my research expanded to also include Southern Africa. Given that region’s high rate of HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence (GBV), my work expressly turned towards matters of health, gender inequality, and music-based advocacy, with my most recent research divided between: (1) social-engagement pursuits, where I act as an ethnomusicologist-consultant for various communities, NGOs, and local organisations in Southern Africa; and (2) scholarly pursuits, where my more recent publications reflect this social-engagement work and is often written in collaboration with members of those communities. To these ends, over the past 14 years I have garnered numerous grants (totalling over £1 million), determining with these projects the remarkable capacity music-based interventions have to enact societal change. Through the years, I have collaborated with over 180 NGOs (non-government organisations), NPOs (non-profit organisations), and government offices. Together, we have implemented dozens of arts-based interventions, strengthened policy frameworks around health and gender equality, and organised training programmes to prepare women and youths for employment in the cultural sector. 


Research Impact


Impact from our collaborative research has been far reaching, recognised by the Vice-Chancellor’s Engaging Globally award (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzCmwy911HI). 


Further examples of impact include:

·      An uptake in HIV-testing across north-eastern Eastern Cape, South Africa (De Jong & Madzikane, Royal Musical Association, 2020);

·      Rural South African communities better equipped to submit grant applications for community-engaged projects (De Jong & Jongisilo 2021): this includes rural Eastern Cape communities using our research to successfully petition for government funds to build a medical centre to support the health needs of older women;

·      Eastern Cape traditional leaders (for the first time) integrate GBV interventions into male initiation rituals (these rituals are where young men assume responsibilities of adulthood) (De Jong, Twayise, Jijingubo, & Tshefu, 2023);

·      Improved police responsiveness in Eastern Cape to address GBV (Suliali, Chief Jongisilo, and Twayise, 2023);

·      Significant reduction in HIV-stigma across key urban regions of Zimbabwe (De Jong, Garambughano, Humble & Dube, in process);


Future Research


·      Combatting Witchcraft-Related Violence through Song: to substantially scale-up an already-tested singing intervention that, implemented in a single chiefdom in Eastern Cape to combat witchcraft-related violence against elderly women, is now being extended to 10 additional chiefdoms in Eastern Cape, with plans to initiate nationally.

·      Arts Leadership for Water Innovation: a multi-sectoral, transdisciplinary network of partners from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and the UK to co-create an arts-driven, community-based methodology that will ignite new ways of thinking, acting, and investing in water security and management.

·      Ending Early and Forced Child Marriages (EFCM): a collaborative project planned with Malawi-based chiefs, NGOs, and religious and community leaders, to design and implement arts-based EFCM prevention strategies.

 

In addition, I am in the process of completing two books:

·      In the Shadow of the Phonograph: Ritual, Recorded Sound, and Remembrance: an edited collection (with co-editor Ian Biddle) querying the extent to which the influence of the phonograph and recorded sound are felt globally, across international and cultural borders, intervening in and shaping how we think about cultural memory and personal/communal rituals of listening and engagement (2025 University of Texas Press).

·      Sounding the Postcolonial Predicament: Curaçao Jazz: Monograph investigating the emergence of jazz on the Dutch island of Curaçao (a nation that remains politically tied to the Netherlands); analysing the island’s jazz through the complex interplay between anticolonial resistance and accommodation (2027 projected publication date).

 

Other Expertise


De Jong is an accomplished classical and salsa flautist, serving as substitute flute with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and performing with such salsa greats as Johnny Pacheco and Celia Cruz.

  

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching (selected listing)


  • Ethnomusicology: Issues and Concepts
  • World Musics: Approaches and Methods
  • Collective Performance (Salsa Band)
  • Music and Identity in the Caribbean
  • Studying Black Music
  • Understanding World Music
  • World Music in Practice (with opportunities to study and perform a variety of musics, including salsa, mbira, samba, bossa nova and gamelan)
  • Salsa Music in Practice


 

Postgraduate Teaching (selected listing)


  • Advanced Studies in Ethnomusicology
  • Ritual, Remembrance and Recorded Sound
  • Music Research Training
  • Urban Musicology: Approaching musical spaces 


 

Postgraduate Supervision (selected listing)

As Primary Supervisor:


  • Francisco Javier Bethencourt LLobet (topic: Flamenco music, dance and identity; PhD completed in 2011)
  • Thomas Astley (topic: Cuban popular musics and contemporary constructions of identity, AHRC-funded)
  • Iván Diaz Burlinson (topic: The relationship between music and capitalist processes in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; PhD expected in 2015, AHRC-funded)
  • Thomas Astley (topic: Cuba's punk music scenes, AHRC-funded)


As Secondary Supervisor:


  • Joao Silva (topic: Portuguese popular musics and symbolic constructions of nation; PhD completed in 2011)


 


 

 

Publications