Eric Beeko

Eric Kwadwo Odame Beeko is currently a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Africana Studies, University of Pittsburgh. He earned a Ph.D. degree in Ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh (2005), a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Music at the University of Ghana, Legon (2000), and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana (1996).

Beeko’s publications include “African Musical Traditions and Practices: Past and Current Trends,” in (Re)Tracing Africa: A Multi-Disciplinary Study of African History, Societies, and Culture, edited by Salome C. Nnoromele and Ogechi E. Anyanwu, Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Co. 2012: 153-176; “The Dual-Relationship Concept of Right-Ownership in Akan Musical Tradition: A Solution for the Individual and Communal Rights-Ownership Conflicts in Music Production,” International Journal of Cultural Property, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2011: 337-364; “Toward a New Stylistic Identity: An Analytical Overview of Ghanaian Contemporary Choral Music,” in Composition in Africa and the Diaspora Series, Vol.2, edited by Akin Euba & Cynthia Tse Kimberlin, UK: MRI Press, 2010: 33-41; and Creative Processes in Akan Musical Cultures: Innovations within Tradition. Germany: VDM-Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesell Schaft & Co., KG. 2009. (Originally a Ph.D. Dissert., 2005).

Articles yet to be published include “Construction of Stylistic Identity in the Context of Creativity: J. H. Kwabena Nketia’s Akan Solo Pieces, the Sankudwom;” “Modes of Cultural Representation: Koo Nimo’s Sung-Tales as Rhetoric, Innuendo, and Double-entendre.” His areas of research interest include “Reviving Tradition, Engaging Modernity: Style and Aesthetics in Ghanaian (Neo)-Pentecostal/Charismatic Church Musical Practices;” and “Black Performance Aesthetics: Agency, Resistance, and the Cultural Politics of Identity in the Performance.”