Simon Music Center, M225D
Education
- Ph.D., Musicology, Cornell University, 2019
- M.A., History, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2013
- B.A., Anthropology, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2004
Sergio Ospina-Romero is assistant professor of music in musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is a musician, anthropologist (B.A.), cultural historian (M.A.), and musicologist (M.A. and Ph.D.). His research and publications deal primarily with sound reproduction technologies, Latin American music, and jazz in the early twentieth century.
Ospina-Romero is the author of three books: Dolor que canta (ICANH, 2017), La conquista discográfica de América Latina (Gourmet Musical, 2024), and Talking Machine Empires (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2025). He has published several articles, book chapters, and short pieces that have appeared in journals, books, and blogs across the Americas. Publication outlets include the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Ethnnomusicology, Twentieth Century Music, Keyboard Perspectives, Latin American Music Review, Journal of Folklore Research, Musicology Now, Revista Argentina de Musicología, Resonancias, Boletín Música, Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, Maguaré, Historia y Sociedad, Goliardos, Ensayos: Historia y Teoría del Arte, and BanRep Cultural.
Ospina-Romero was one of the inaugural IU Arts and Presidential Fellows in 2022-23. Other awards and recognitions include the Klaus P. Wachsmann Prize of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Cornell University’s Donald J. Grout Memorial Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship, and honorary mentions at the Otto Mayer Serra Award and the Premio de Musicología de Casa de las Américas.
He has taught at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Universidad de los Andes, and Cornell University. He is an active member of various academic associations, including the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, and Latin American Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.
Ospina-Romero is the pianist and director of the Latin jazz quartet Palonegro and of the salsa band La salsoteca.
Selected Publications and Recordings
BOOKS:
Talking Machine Empires: Phonograph Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean During the Acoustic Era (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2025)
La conquista musical de América Latina, 1903-1926. Buenos Aires: Gourmet Musical Ediciones, 2024.
Dolor que canta. La vida y la música de Luis A. Calvo en la sociedad colombiana de comienzos del siglo XX. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2017.
El sonido que seremos. Historias y practicas musicales en Colombia. [Co-edited with Rondy F. Torres]. Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes y Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2024.
ARTICLES:
“The Dawn of the Jazz Age in the Caribbean: Dance, Consumer Culture, and the Imperial Shape of Modern Entertainment.”Twentieth-Century Music Vol. 20, No. 3 (October 2023), 347–377.
“Ghosts in the Machine and Other Tales around a ‘Marvelous Invention.’ Player-Pianos in Latin America in the Early Twentieth Century.”Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 72, No. 1 (Spring 2019), 1–42.
“Latinoamérica a lo Calle 13,”BanRep Cultural, March 2, 2022
RECORDINGS:
“Ringuiringuitos” and “Palonegro-ing 2.0” with Palonegro (2024)
Two minutes apart (album), with Palonegro (2019)
More info and publications: Academia.