Marié Abe

Research Areas: Ethnomusicology; politics of space and sound; Japanese popular performing arts; afro-futurism of the US; cultural advocacy.

Marié Abe is Associate Professor of Music in the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, and an affiliated faculty at the African Studies Center and American and New England Studies Program at Boston University. Her recent book, Resonances of Chindon-ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), is an ethnographic exploration of the politics of space and sound, affect, and Japanese popular performing arts. Other research interests include cultural advocacy, ritual music in Bali and Thailand, the accordion and immigrant communities in California, anti-nuclear movement and music in Japan, anti-U.S. military movement and music in Okinawa, and afro-futurism in the United States.

A recipient of a Faculty Fellowship at the Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College (2013-2014), during the 2018-19 year she will be a fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto. Before coming to Boston University, Marié taught in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, where she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and in the Department of Music and Asian Studies Program at UC Berkeley.

Marié is also interested in public ethnomusicology. She has co-produced the NPR radio documentary “Squeezebox Stories” (2011), which tells stories from Californian immigration history using the accordion as a common trope.

As an active performer and improviser of the accordion and piano, she performs and records with artists from the United States, Japan, and beyond. She is also a member of the Boston-based Ethiopian groove collective Debo Band (Sub Pop/Next Ambience), which has been featured in the New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, and NPR.

Marié holds an MA and a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor degree in sociology, anthropology, and ethnomusicology from Swarthmore College.

Selected Publications:
Resonances of Chindon-Ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan (Wesleyan University Press, 2018)

“Reimagining Oaxcan Heritage through the Accordion in San Joaquin Valley, California” in Journal of Popular Music Studies 27 (3): 304-327.

“Squeezebox Stories.” 2011. 60-minute radio documentary for National Public Radio.
[Won Excellence in Journalism Award (Best Arts and Culture Reporting) from the Society for Professionalism Journalism (2012.) Funded by the California Council for the Humanities.]

For a detailed academic bio and CV, please see Professor Abe’s Department Profile.