Bio
Kai West is an interdisciplinary scholar and multi-instrumentalist with research and teaching interests in popular music, musical instrument studies, critical race theory, US music, feminist theory, and media studies. His current book project examines electric guitar culture in the twenty-first century from the perspectives of technology, performance, and media. In it, he details a decades-long struggle between regression and reinvention that shapes the instrument’s contemporary culture, spanning from technological developments to performance practices to social politics. Kai has published original research in the Journal of the American Musicological Society and presented numerous papers at meetings of the American Musicological Society, Society for American Music, and International Association for the Study of Popular Music.
A former professional musician, he holds degrees in classical double bass performance from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the University of Michigan, where he later earned his Ph.D. in musicology. He also creates and releases experimental ambient music using guitars, effects pedals, synthesizers, and tape.
