Loneka Battiste: Confronting the Colorblind Fallacy | S01E10

Loneka Battiste is Assistant Professor of Music Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Drawing on 12 years of experience teaching children in school and community settings, she now teaches elementary general and middle school choral methods and graduate courses in music education. She has presented several papers and sessions at local, national, and international conferences and symposia and is a frequent clinician and guest conductor for elementary, middle school, and community choirs. She currently serves as Music Education Representative for the Southern Region of the College Music Society and on the Council for the Tennessee Music Education Association as the Society for Music Teacher Education Representative and Research Chair. She has also served in various leadership positions in the Society for Ethnomusicology, including Co-Chair of the Education Section, Co-Chair of the Crossroads Section, and Co-Chair of the Gertrude Robinson Network of Scholars.

In 2019, she completed a Fulbright Fellowship at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil and studied coco, a musical tradition of the Brazilian northeast, in the Xambá community of Olinda, Pernambuco, Brazil. While in Brazil, she gave lectures on African American musics and formed a gospel choir at UFPE. She also gave lectures on culturally responsive teaching at UFPE, Universidade Federal de Paraiba, and Artefatos da Cultura Negra in Ceará.

Her current research addresses the history of African American music education and the training of African American music teachers.