Ahkeel Mestayer

Job title: 
Ph.D. Student
Department: 
Ethnomusicology
Bio/CV: 

Ahkeel Mestayer is a professional musician and ethnomusicologist from San Francisco. His research and performance interests are Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian music. Ahkeel has traveled across Europe and Latin America performing and is a voting member of the Grammy Academy. His current research project is a comparison of musical transculturation processes in Matanzas, Cuba and Salvador, Brazil. Specifically, he is interested in exploring the concept of Black Cosmopolitanism across African ethnic groups in Cuba and Brazil and its relationship to music.