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 holds a B.A. in Music and Anthropology from Whitman College (1995), an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago (2000), and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago (2007). Prior to his current appointment, he taught at Augustana College and Texas A&M University. As an ethnomusicologist, his research interests encompass the music industry of India, Bollywood film songs, music commodities, markets, and values, commodification of music, music industries, intellectual property, Indian musics, jazz and improvisatory musics, music and multimedia, semiotics, anthropological linguistics, South Asian studies, media industry studies, and community-engaged research including music, aging, memory, and soundscapes.

Beaster-Jones authored Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song (Oxford University Press, 2015), Music Commodities, Markets, and Values: Music as Merchandise (Routledge, 2016), and Dil Chahta Hai Soundtrack (Bloomsbury, 2024). He co-edited Music in Contemporary Indian Film: Memory, Voice, Identity (Routledge, 2017), is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Cinemas of South Asia (2026, with Ajay Gehlawat), and is co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Music Industry Studies (with Kaleb Goldschmitt). His publications include articles in Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, and South Asian Popular Culture, as well as book chapters in edited volumes. He has received the Fulbright-Hays DDRA grant, Thomas J. Watson Foundation grant, grants from the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, and College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University, and the 2008 Lise Waxer Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology's Popular Music Section for the paper 'Indexing the Past, Selling the Future.' His projects, such as Music Memory Hours (since 2016), the Gateway to Merced Project (co-directed with Patricia Vergara), and a 2025 Multicampus Research Program Initiative grant on Merced County soundscapes, are funded by the UC Humanities Research Institute, Luce Family Foundation, California Arts Council, and UC Merced's Center for the Humanities. He co-produces the What's Your Problem Podcast and leads the G Street Revolution faculty ensemble.