Jonathan Ritter is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on the indigenous and Afro-Hispanic musical cultures of Andean South America. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from UCLA, and his B.A. in American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota. At UCR, he teaches numerous courses on Native American, Latin American, and other musical traditions, and is the director of Mayupatapi, the UCR Andean Music Ensemble.

Prof. Ritter’s work, as both a scholar and a teacher, addresses broad questions of how musical expressions are implicated in the work of cultural memory and political activism, particularly during times of political violence. His book, We Bear Witness With Our Song: The Politics of Music and Violence in the Peruvian Andes (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) explores these themes as they emerged within the traditional and folkloric music of Ayacucho, Peru, in the context of the Shining Path guerrilla insurrection and ensuing conflict that took place in that country. Together with J. Martin Daughtry, he is also co-editor of Music in the Post-9/11 World (Routledge, 2007), a collection of essays by ethnomusicologists and other music scholars exploring both domestic and international musical responses to the attacks of September 11th, 2001, as well as the myriad ways that ensuing political and military actions have changed the very circumstances in which musicians create and perform today all over the world.

Ritter’s scholarship on Andean, Afro-Ecuadorian, and Native American musics has appeared in numerous academic journals, edited collections, and encyclopedias. He currently serves on the editorial board of the interdisciplinary journal Latin American Perspectives, and as a Contributing Editor for the Handbook of Latin American Studies. Beyond music scholarship, he is also the author of a short monograph, A Work in Progress: Autonomy on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast (Institute for International Cooperation and Development, 1995), which analyzes the political and cultural challenges that faced Nicaragua’s indigenous Miskito population in the wake of the war that devastated the region in the 1980s.