Jennifer W. Kyker

Jennifer W. Kyker is Professor of Music in the Arthur Satz Department of Music at the University of Rochester, with a joint appointment in the Musicology Department at Eastman School of Music. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, and her BA from Mount Holyoke College in 2002. Dr. Kyker has received research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and Mount Holyoke College. She is also a three-time Fulbright Fellow.

Dr. Kyker’s ethnography of popular music in postcolonial Zimbabwe, Oliver Mtukudzi: Living Tuku Music in Zimbabwe, was published through Indiana University Press’s African Expressive Cultures series in 2016. She has published articles on listening and reception, music and gender, HIV/AIDS, and Zimbabwean musical bows in journals such as Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, African Music, and the American Journal of Public Health.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Kyker’s current project, Portrait of Zimbabwe/Mifananidzo YeZimbabwe, presents the work of Chicago Dzviti (1961-1995), a pioneering Zimbabwean photographer whose archive offers an extensive visual record of Zimbabwean social, cultural, and musical life. Through a physical exhibit at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and a parallel digital exhibit, Portrait of Zimbabwe brings Chicago Dzviti’s exceptional photographs into public view for the first time. Through a multi-media approach involving audio recordings, oral histories, and ephemera, Portrait of Zimbabwe contributes to the history of visual arts and musical life in Zimbabwe, and to the global art world’s growing interest in photographers from across the African continent.

In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Kyker founded the non-profit organization Tariro: Hope and Health for Zimbabwe’s Orphans (tariro.org). Tariro pays school fees and related expenses for orphaned and vulnerable teenage girls in Zimbabwean communities affected by HIV/AIDS, in 2003. In recognition of her ongoing work with Tariro, Dr. Kyker received Mount Holyoke College’s Mary Lyon Award in 2013.