Scott Linford is a music scholar, filmmaker, and musician who has conducted research in West Africa, Central America, and the United States. His primary research interests include participation and musical experience, identity and belonging, agriculture and the environment, musical repatriation, and colonial and post-colonial politics. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, he holds a master of arts degree and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from UCLA, and previously served as music faculty at Berklee College of Music and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

In addition to his dissertation, “Interweaving Worlds: Jola Music and Relational Identity in Senegambia and Beyond,” Linford’s work has appeared in Ethnomusicology Review, the Yearbook for Traditional Music, and Ethnomusicology Forum. He has presented papers at annual meetings including the Society for Ethnomusicology, the African Studies Association, and the Western States Folklore Society, and has given invited lectures at institutions including UCLA, Duke University, Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, and Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City. He is currently producing an album for Smithsonian Folkways focused on the ekonting, a Senegambian plucked lute. Linford previously served as co-chair of the African and African Diasporic Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

A guitarist, fiddler, and banjoist, Linford participates regularly in local old time and bluegrass music communities. He published an instructional DVD in banjo technique for Alfred Music, and builds experimental banjos exploring phases of the instrument’s historical development. Linford has also directed documentary films focusing on musical communities in New Orleans, Seattle, and Senegal, and continues to work on collaborative multimedia projects.