Maya Cunningham is an ethnomusicologist, a Fulbright Scholar and Ford Foundation Fellow, an Africana Studies scholar, jazz vocalist and a cultural activist. Her research focus is on African American cultural identity and traditional African and African American musics. She is an expert in African American expressive culture, African American history and jazz history. Cunningham is a jazz vocalist in the tradition of Abbey Lincoln, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Lorez Alexandria. She is also a composer and fuses her music with visual arts works in collage/montage, fused glass, paint, monoprint and mixed media. She sings in several African languages, including Ewe, Bamana, and Setswana. Cunningham is a Fulbright Scholar and was recently awarded the 2022 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.
Cunningham is completing a PhD at the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in African American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology. Cunningham received a MA in Afro-American Studies from UMass Amherst, a MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park, a MA in jazz performance from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and a Bachelor of Music in jazz studies from Howard University. Cunningham is an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music where she teaches courses on jazz and other Afro-descendant music traditions through the lens of ethnomusicology. She is also a lecturer in the Department of Music and Theatre at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she teaches courses on Black music, including the music and cultural traditions of Africa.
As a jazz vocalist, Cunningham is a master storyteller through song, an exciting improvisor with a shimmering five octave range. Her approach draws on the emotional delivery of the Holiday lineage and the improvisational spontaneity of Vaughan. She has worked with jazz master Charles Tolliver as well as Ali Jackson, Wycliffe Gordon and Rodney Whitaker. Cunningham is also an accomplished visual artist who fuses her music with her collage/montage, monoprint and fused glass images.
In 2022 Cunningham published, “The Hush Harbor as Sanctuary: African American Survival Silence During British/American Slavery,” in a volume called Sonic Histories of Occupation: Sound and Imperialism in Global Context (Taylor and Skelchy, eds). Another book chapter, “Singing Power/Sounding Identity: The Black Woman's Voice from Hush Harbors and Beyond” is included in The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories, edited by Janell Hobson (2021). Cunningham has also published essays and articles, including “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman” in Ms. Magazine and “A People In Flight: African Americans in Movement,” for Smithsonian Folkways Records.
In 2017 she received a Fulbright fellowship to research how traditional music is used to teach national identity to primary school students in Botswana. Cunningham is also a two-time award recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar fellowship to study African American Gullah culture, as well as African American culture and blues traditions in the Mississippi Delta. In 2016 she received a Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms fellowship and a Fund for Teachers fellowship to research traditional music in Ghana and India. She has presented her research and writing at conferences nationally and internationally. These include the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Association for the Study of African American Life and Culture (ASALH), the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS), the University of Nottingham, the University of Albany, New York University and the Documenting Jazz Conference at University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Cunningham launched Themba Arts and Culture . to use research in Black music and culture to empower Afro-descendant children through learning opportunities about their history, culture and traditional music through research-based curricula and professional development for teachers. Ethnomusicology In Action also aims to increase public awareness of Black music traditions through music recordings and broadcast media, like radio.
Maya Cunningham has traveled all over the world conducting research and learning traditional music.
Cunningham is completing a PhD at the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in African American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology. Cunningham received a MA in Afro-American Studies from UMass Amherst, a MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park, a MA in jazz performance from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and a Bachelor of Music in jazz studies from Howard University. Cunningham is an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music where she teaches courses on jazz and other Afro-descendant music traditions through the lens of ethnomusicology. She is also a lecturer in the Department of Music and Theatre at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she teaches courses on Black music, including the music and cultural traditions of Africa.
As a jazz vocalist, Cunningham is a master storyteller through song, an exciting improvisor with a shimmering five octave range. Her approach draws on the emotional delivery of the Holiday lineage and the improvisational spontaneity of Vaughan. She has worked with jazz master Charles Tolliver as well as Ali Jackson, Wycliffe Gordon and Rodney Whitaker. Cunningham is also an accomplished visual artist who fuses her music with her collage/montage, monoprint and fused glass images.
In 2022 Cunningham published, “The Hush Harbor as Sanctuary: African American Survival Silence During British/American Slavery,” in a volume called Sonic Histories of Occupation: Sound and Imperialism in Global Context (Taylor and Skelchy, eds). Another book chapter, “Singing Power/Sounding Identity: The Black Woman's Voice from Hush Harbors and Beyond” is included in The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories, edited by Janell Hobson (2021). Cunningham has also published essays and articles, including “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman” in Ms. Magazine and “A People In Flight: African Americans in Movement,” for Smithsonian Folkways Records.
In 2017 she received a Fulbright fellowship to research how traditional music is used to teach national identity to primary school students in Botswana. Cunningham is also a two-time award recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar fellowship to study African American Gullah culture, as well as African American culture and blues traditions in the Mississippi Delta. In 2016 she received a Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms fellowship and a Fund for Teachers fellowship to research traditional music in Ghana and India. She has presented her research and writing at conferences nationally and internationally. These include the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Association for the Study of African American Life and Culture (ASALH), the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS), the University of Nottingham, the University of Albany, New York University and the Documenting Jazz Conference at University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Cunningham launched Themba Arts and Culture . to use research in Black music and culture to empower Afro-descendant children through learning opportunities about their history, culture and traditional music through research-based curricula and professional development for teachers. Ethnomusicology In Action also aims to increase public awareness of Black music traditions through music recordings and broadcast media, like radio.
Maya Cunningham has traveled all over the world conducting research and learning traditional music.
