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Jon Turner

Lecturer

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Bio

Jon Turner is an ethnomusicologist, photographer, and guitar maker whose research centers on musical instrument making in Brazil. As a Fulbright fellow, he spent two years in São Paulo conducting documentary fieldwork in luthiers' workshops, studying how craftspeople make, repair, and think about the instruments behind Brazilian popular music. That research became his dissertation, "Guitar Makers in São Paulo and California" (2025), and an extensive photographic archive.

His MA specialized in Brazilian popular music, and he speaks fluent Portuguese. He has photographed at Casa de Francisca, one of São Paulo's leading music venues, and continues to work as an instrument repair technician with Rabeca São Paulo. In the Bay Area, he is house photographer for Stern Grove Festival and Noise Pop, and a working bassist.

At SAIC he teaches Music of the Caribbean and Brazil. He holds a BA in music and an MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a certificate in luthiery from the Roberto-Venn School.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course follows migrations both forced and voluntary from Africa across trade routes to the Caribbean and Brazil as a frame for examining musics traditional and popular. In addition to examining these specific musics and musical instruments we will consider how musics from the Afro- Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian experiences influence Latin and South America and the Untied States. This course emphasizes selected ethnographic reading, seminar discussion, individual ethnographic experiences, and the chance for students to connect knowledge from the seminar to real world performances and musicians.

Class Number

1675

Credits

3