• Kyra Gaunt
• University at Albany SUNY

Digital ethnomusicologist Kyra Gaunt voices the unspoken through song, scholarship, and social media. Winner of the 2007 Alan Merriam Prize for her book The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, her publications contributed to the emergence of musical studies of play, hip-hop music studies, black girlhood studies, and hip-hop feminism. Currently, a Senior TED Fellow (2020-2022), her TED talk “How the Jump Rope Got Its Rhythm” has reached over 7M+ views in over 28 languages. Her 2020 article “The Magic of Black Girls Play” in the New York Times was the Editor’s Pick of the Day. She is currently writing her next book PLAYED: How Music Orchestrates Violence Against Black Girls on YouTube to expose the public health risks of music and the sexual grooming of girls in online bedroom musical play like twerking.

Speaking In:

• Black Girls on the Verge