Damascus Kafumbe

Damascus Kafumbe is an ethnomusicologist, performer, composer, and instrument technician. He has taught at Middlebury College since 2011, and his ethnomusicology curriculum is global, experiential, and interdisciplinary, combining research, performance, and community engagement approaches. He founded and directs the African Music and Dance Ensemble and the Afropop Band, maintains the College’s collection of East African instruments, and has led study abroad courses in Uganda.

Kafumbe has conducted fieldwork in Uganda since the late 1990s. His research explores music, politics, history, and social organization in Buganda, a kingdom in southcentral Uganda, and in wider East Africa. This work is collaborative, and he treats the musicians he works with as co-analysts and co-authors. He is the author of two books from the University of Rochester Press, Tuning the Kingdom: Kawuugulu Musical Performance, Politics, and Storytelling in Buganda (2018) and Interpreting Court Song in Uganda: Musical Meaning, Power Relations, and Political Life (2025). Tuning the Kingdom won the Society for Ethnomusicology’s 2020 Kwabena Nketia Book Prize and received an honorable mention for the African Studies Association’s 2019 Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize. Forthcoming are Apportioning in Performance: Musicians and the Survival of Court Musical Practice in Buganda (University of Rochester Press) and Music, Rupture, and Survival in Kampala: The Life of Ugandan Royal Court Page Semeo Ssemambo Ssebuwufu (ca. 1959–2015) (Cambridge University Press). He is also completing Democratic and Decolonial Pedagogy: An Autoethnography of an African Music and Dance Performance Course.

His documentary film Drum Making as a Way of Life in Southern Uganda (Alexander Street Press, 2020) and the four interactive online courses on African music he co-authored (Music Workshop, 2022) reflect his commitment to making ethnomusicology accessible through audiovisual media. The courses have introduced African music and cultures to more than 7.8 million K–8 students in 188 countries.

Kafumbe’s other honors include the Warren D. Allen Faculty Citation for Distinguished Achievement in Scholarly Research in Music from the Florida State University College of Music (2024); the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Diversity Action Committee Research and Publication Award (2017); a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship at the University of Jos, Nigeria (2015–2016), where he helped design the first Bachelor of Arts in Music in northern Nigeria; and Middlebury’s Peter E. Branch ’65 Exceptional Junior Faculty Award (2015).

He edits the Eastman/Rochester Studies in Ethnomusicology series at the University of Rochester Press, serves on the advisory board of the journal African Music, and is music book review editor of Traditions of Music and Dance, the official journal of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD). He has served the Society for Ethnomusicology as secretary and board member, as president of its Northeast Chapter, and as co-chair of its African and African Diasporic Music Section, and he is founding co-chair of the North American branch of the ICTMD Study Group on African Musics. At Middlebury, he has chaired the Department of Music and directed the African Studies program, and he is currently helping create a new Global Arts and Culture track in International and Global Studies. Through his African Soundscapes Outreach Program, he brings African music to schools and community organizations across Vermont.

Kafumbe’s compositions and arrangements have been performed by orchestras and bands, and his recordings span Ugandan folk traditions, Afropop, and devotional music.

He holds a Ph.D. and M.M. in musicology and ethnomusicology from Florida State University and a B.M. from Makerere University.