Welcome to the website for Kevin Fellezs,

a music scholar (and recovering pianist)

interested in the relationship between the social and the aesthetic in popular music

Kevin Fellezs


Academic Positions

  2012-present        Associate Professor                         Columbia University

  2006-11               Assistant Professor                          University of California, Merced

  2004-06              UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow    University of California, Berkeley


  2022-25              Director, Center for Jazz Studies       Columbia University

  2015-16               Senior Tsunoda Fellow                     Waseda University, Tokyo 


education                        

  2004             PhD, History of Consciousness            University of California, Santa Cruz

  2000             MA with Honors, Humanities               San Francisco State University

  1998              BA magna cum laude, Music               San Francisco State University


Kevin Fellezs has been interviewed for articles in print, online, and on video/TV for, among others, The Guardian, Studio 360/Public Radio International, German Public Radio, El FénixDiverse: Issues of Higher Education, the NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, WUSA9The Blues (Public Radio International series, episode 4, "Standing At the Crossroads: Robert Johnson and Depression-era Blues"), and Univision Noticias. He is a featured interviewee in Fred Ho's Last Year  (dir., Steven De Castro, 2013). He has served as a consultant for various news and music programs including Native America Calling and the New Jazz Archive as well as for the music to art exhibitions at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery and the 20 and Odd: The 400 Year Anniversary of 1619 exhibition, curated by Kalia Brooks Nelson, at the LeRoy Neiman Gallery in New York City.


Kevin has given presentations and talks at academic conferences and universities across the United States as well as internationally, including Australia, Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, England, Finland, Germany, Japan, Scotland, and Spain. He has given numerous public talks in venues such as the Museum of the Chinese in America, PayPal NYC/Spotify (as an invited panelist for the event, African Roots to American Charts: An evening celebrating the impact of black music and culture on America), the Obama Hawaiian Africana Museum (as an invited panelist for Coltrane in Hawai'i: Time, Place, & Spirit: The Journey), Scholars on Scene, Book Culture, and the Knox Art Gallery in Harlem. He has also served as an invited moderator for events such as Asian American Musicians Advocating for Social Justice and Racial Equity and as an invited speaker for A Dancer in the Revolution: A Celebration of Howard "Stretch" Johnson.


He was interviewed for Long Yellow Road, an NHK documentary on jazz artist Toshiko Akiyoshi, celebrating her long, illustrious career and was a participant for episode 3, "California," of the PBS Silkroad Project: American Railroad podcast, hosted by Rhiannon Giddens, focused on the contributions of Japanese and Chinese workers to the U.S. transcontinental railroad.