Alaba Ilesanmi

Alaba Ilesanmi's research, teaching, and public engagement center on global Black music, expressive cultures, and cultural life, with a focus on their intellectual, historical, and social formations. His work explores the intersections of sound, music, history, and culture, paying particular attention to the broader contexts that shape musical meaning, including decoloniality, globalization, identity, indigenous knowledge systems, and postcolonial experience. His research interests also include musical biography, music and memory, music and spirituality, global music pedagogy, public and creative musicology, and sound studies. His interdisciplinary work connects (ethno)musicology with Africana studies, diaspora studies, ethnic studies, popular music studies, and sound studies.

Bridging creative practice, scholarship, and public engagement, he directs the new Afrobeat(s) Arkestra, an Afro-pop music ensemble that brings together musicians, dancers, creatives, and Afro-music enthusiasts to explore and perform a wide range of African and Black diasporic styles, including classic and contemporary genres such as Afrobeat, Afrofunk, Afropop, Afrosoul, and Highlife. He also directs the Pan-African Art Music Concert Series and Commissioning Project, which promotes African art music and supports composers in creating new works inspired by and drawn from African musical traditions.

His writings have been published in Oxford Bibliographies in Music, Popular Music History Journal, and The Conversation, where he shares his insights with a broad public audience. His work has received support through various fellowships and awards, including those from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Florida Education Fund (McKnight Doctoral Fellowship), the Presser Foundation, and the West African Research Association (WARA). 

He holds a PhD in Musicology from Florida State University, a BM in Music Education from the University of Texas at Tyler, and advanced certifications in music theory, piano, and percussion from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) and Trinity College of Music, London.