James Revell Carr, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology and director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American music, studies the importance of travel and commerce in the development of hybrid music and dance cultures. His major interests include sea chanteys, Anglo-American balladry, Hawaiian music, folk music revivals, and improvisational rock.

Carr’s first book, Hawaiian Music in Motion: Mariners, Missionaries, and Minstrels(University of Illinois Press, 2014), about the musical exchange between American sailors and Hawaiian musicians in the nineteenth century, was a co-recipient of the Society of Ethnomusicology’s Alan P. Merriam Prize for outstanding book in ethnomusicology for 2015. Carr has articles and reviews in the Journal of American Folklore, The Yearbook for Traditional Music, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History, The Journal of British Studies, American Historical Review and others. He has also published essays in numerous books about The Grateful Dead and their fans, the Deadheads, which will be the topic of his next book.