MusiQology 101 with Dr. Guy
By day Guthrie Ramsey, Jr. is a not-so-mild-mannered ethnomusicologist and college professor (and part-time baseball player), but by night he dons his Funkenstein cape and transforms into Dr. Guy, an accomplished pianist and leader of Dr. Guy's MusiQology. Y the Q?, the first release from Dr. Guy's MusiQology, pushes the boundaries of what some might refer to as "Smooth Jazz," draws on references like Quincy Jones, Joe Sample, Toni Morrison ("Sula's Groove, "Dorcas's Lament" and "Milkman's Dues"), Herbie Hancock and the Doobie Brothers, while giving love to the Philly community that he now claims.
But let's be clear about the credentials; Guthrie Ramsey is not simply anybody's music teacher and frustrated musician. His day job is as Associate Professor of Music History in the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania. Ramsey is also the author of the award-winning and critically acclaimed Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (University of California Press, 2003), which was named outstanding book of the year by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). As one reviewer wrote about Ramsey and Race Music, "As a working jazz musician and former musical director for a church, Ramsey has a first-hand perspective on the intimacy between the music and the folk. As an interdisciplinary scholar trained as an ethnomusicologist he is also cognizant of the music and the formal academic modes of its study. The great success of Race Music is that Ramsey never loses sight of either of these worlds and that fact alone makes Race Music a groundbreaking addition to the fields of Ethnomusicology and African-American Studies."
In a world where ballplayers rap and rappers act, Guthrie Ramsey, Jr. is the real deal, bridging the gap between what feeds our intellect and what feeds our spirit as well as the Ivory Tower and the Jazz club.
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