David Novak, Ph.D.,
Columbia University, Department of Music
 

David Novak received his Ph.D. in Music from Columbia University in 2006. He is an ethnomusicologist interested in articulations of cultural difference in the circulation of musical media. His work considers the distribution of popular music, sound technology, and social practices of listening as critical discourses of global modernity. His dissertation was an ethnography of Noise, an underground electronic genre that generated prominent US-Japan networks of musicians and listeners during the 1990s.

During his postdoctoral fellowship, David is working towards the publication of his first book, entitled Japan Noise: Global Media Circulation and Experimental Music, to be published by Duke University Press. The book places the modern musical avant-garde in a multi-sited context charged with specific historical and ongoing effects of locality, cultural ideology, and technological change. He is also completing a collaborative soundscape recording that documents the city of Osaka through a mix of its characteristic sounds, as interpreted and recorded by contemporary residents, as well as an article that describes the impact of public perceptions of urban noise on homeless and migrant worker populations in the city.

David has served on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College and at Columbia University. In 2009-2010, he will teach Asian Music Humanities and organize the “Listening In, Feeding Back” conference and concert to be held February 13-14, 2009 in 301 Philosophy Hall and Miller Theatre. Click here for the conference website.

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