Alejandro L. Madrid

Alejandro L. Madrid is the Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music at Harvard University. A distinguished cultural theorist of sound and music, he specializes in Latin American and Latinx studies, blending musicology and ethnomusicology through multi-methodological approaches. His work spans popular, folk, and art musics, with nine books and acclaimed articles establishing him as a leading scholar in Ibero-American music studies.

• Currently researching sound archives and the aural turn in The Archive and the Aural City: Sound, Knowledge, and the Politics of Listening
• Authoring a book on Silvio Rodríguez’s Nueva Trova album Días y flores
• Collaborating with Momenta Quartet on a 5-CD project of Julián Carrillo’s microtonal string quartets for Naxos

Scientific Awards:

• Humboldt Research Award
• Guggenheim Fellowship
• Dent Medal
• Premio de Musicología Casa de las Américas (Cuba)
• Premio de Musicología Samuel Claro Valdés (Chile)
• Top honors from AMS, LASA, IASPM, SEM, and ASCAP Foundation

As editor of Oxford University Press’s Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music series, he shapes scholarly discourse. Recently served as music advisor to filmmaker Peter Greenaway for Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015), set in early 1930s Mexico.