Juan Diego Díaz is an ethnomusicologist with a geographic research interest in Africa and its diaspora, particularly Brazil and West Africa. He explores how African diasporic musics circulate and transform across the Atlantic and how they serve individuals and communities in identity formation. His book Africanness in Action (Oxford University Press, 2021) focuses on how musicians from Bahia, Brazil understand and negotiate essentialist notions about African music and culture. He is also a long-term Capoeira Angola practitioner and has led capoeira, berimbau, and samba ensembles.

Previous to teaching at UC Davis, Juan Diego held posts as a lecturer at the University of Ghana and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Essex, the latter funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The funded research investigates the music of the descendants of freed enslaved Africans who resettled from Brazil to Ghana, Togo, and Benin during the nineteenth century. This research has produced a book titled Tabom Voices: A History of the Ghanaian Afro- Brazilian Community in Their Own Words (2016) and the documentary film Tabom in Bahia  (co-directed with Nilton Pereira, 2017), documenting the visit of a Ghanaian master drummer to Bahia, Brazil.

His articles have appeared in journals such as Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, Analytical Approaches to World Music, and Latin American Music Review.

Selected Publications

Books

Diaz, Juan Diego, 2021. Africanness in Action: Essentialism and Musical Imaginations of Africa in Brazil. New York: Oxford University Press.

Diaz, Juan Diego. 2016. Tabom Voices: History of the Ghanaian Afro-Brazilian Community in their own Words. Brazilian Embassy in Ghana, Tabom Heritage Project,Accra: Legend.

Journal Articles

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2024. “From Ethno-theories to Theories: A Path Toward Decolonizing Musical Analysis.” Ethnomusicology, 68 (2): 218-46.

Díaz, Juan Diego and Alex Rossi. “Singing in Tune: Berimbau Tuning and Song Mode in Capoeira.” Analytical Approaches to World Music, 12 (1): 1-117. 

Díaz, Juan Diego, Matthias Röhrig Assunção and Gregory Beyer .2021. “Arching over the Atlantic: Exploring Links Between Brazilian and Angolan Musical Bows.” Ethnomusicology, 65 (2): 286–323.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2020. “The Musical Experience of Diasporas: The Return of a Tabom Master Drummer to Bahia.” Latin American Music Review, 41 (2): 131–66.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2017. “Experimentations with Timelines: A Strategy of Rhythm in Afro-Bahian Jazz Complication.” Analytical Approaches to World Music, 6 (1): 1–34. 

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2017. “Between Repetition and Variation: A Musical Performance of Malícia in Capoeira.” Ethnomusicology Forum, 26 (1): 46-68.

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2016. “Listening with the Body: An Aesthetics of Spirit Possession Outside the Terreiro.” Ethnomusicology 60 (1): 89-124.

Book Chapters

Díaz, Juan Diego. 2023. “Toques del Pasado: Los Toques de Berimbau en la Capoeira de Mediados del Siglo XX.” In Capoeira: Pasado, Presente y Futuro de una Práctica Afrobrasileña, edited by Sergio González Varela and Ricardo Nascimento, Pp. 61–107. Parquelândia: Radiadora.

Documentary Films

Díaz, Juan Diego and Nilton Pereira. 2017. Tabom in Bahia. Documentary film, 52 min. Ethnographic Film Catalogue of the Royal Anthropological Society, London (2018)