Rate My Professor Jayson Beaster-Jones

Jayson Beaster-Jones is a Professor of Music in the Global Arts Studies Program at the University of California, Merced. He received his B.A. in Music and Anthropology from Whitman College, M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2007. As an ethnomusicologist, his work focuses on the music industry of India, where he has conducted years of ethnographic research in North India. His academic interests encompass music and multimedia, Indian musics and Bollywood film songs, commodification of expressive culture, music industries, intellectual property, community-engaged research, jazz and improvisatory musics, music semiotics, and linguistic anthropology.

Beaster-Jones previously taught at Texas A&M University, Augustana University, and the University of Chicago. He has been awarded grants from the Fulbright-Hays DDRA, Thomas J. Watson Foundation, UC Humanities Research Initiative, California Humanities, UC Humanities Research Institute, Luce Family Foundation, California Arts Council, and UC Merced's Center for the Humanities. In 2025, he received a three-year Multicampus Research Program Initiative grant with Patricia Vergara for studying the soundscapes of Merced County in an era of climate change. He co-directs the Gateway to Merced Project, a community-engaged oral history project, and has run Music Memory Hours since 2016 to explore music, autobiographical memory, and aging. Key publications include Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song (Oxford University Press, 2015), Music Commodities, Markets, and Values: Music as Merchandise (Routledge, 2016), Music in Contemporary Indian Film: Memory, Voice, Identity (Routledge, 2017, co-edited), and Dil Chahta Hai Soundtrack (Bloomsbury, 2024). He is co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Music Industry Studies and The Routledge Handbook of Cinemas of South Asia (2026). Additionally, he co-produces the What's Your Problem Podcast and leads the G Street Revolution faculty ensemble.