David Verbuč (from Slovenia) received his master’s degree in ethnomusicology at UC Davis (with distinction), and his bachelor’s degree in music education from the Academy of Music, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (under the supervision of Svanibor Pettan, professor of ethnomusicology). 

Verbuč worked—and occasionally still does—as a music journalist for Slovenian papers Muska/Nova Muska, Mladina, Odzven, and as a music journalist, radio DJ and music director at a Slovenian independent and alternative radio station, Radio Študent, Ljubljana. He wrote over 250 musical transcriptions for several publications of Slovenian folk music and wrote a chapter on Slovenian folk music for a 4th-grade elementary school textbook. Between 2000 and 2008 he conducted field work research in Upper Savinja Valley, North Slovenia, where he also recorded over 100 singers and collected around 1300 folk songs. In 2008 he published a selection of 108 songs (and other folklore texts) from his collection on a double CD Gorših ljudi na svetu ni: terenski posnetki ljudskih pesmi iz Zgornje Savinjske doline (There are No Finer People in the World: Field recordings of folk songs from the Upper Savinja Valley).

Verbuč has presented his research papers at the following conferences: Music and Minorities (ICTM, Prague 2008); North California Chapter for SEM, March 2013, at the University of San Francisco, North California Chapter, Santa Rosa, 2009; What to do with folklore? (Ljubljana 2009); North California Chapter for SEM, March 2013, at the University of San Francisco; Symposium Music and Protest in Various Parts of the World, in Ljubljana, August 22, 2013. He has published the following scholarly articles: “Contemporary Musical Peasant Traditions in Primož, Slovenia, and the Notion of ‘National Heritage’” (in Voices of the Weak: Music and Minorities; Slovo21 + Faculty of Humanities of Charles University Prague, 2009), and “From text to context: Performance events in Primož” (in Trapped in Folklore: Studies in Music and Dance Tradition and Their Contemporary Transformations; Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2013).

Since 2008, Verbuč has been a Graduate Teaching Assistant at UC Davis. He is currently finishing his dissertation “’Living publicly:’ house shows, alternative music venues, and the struggle for place and space among the American DIY communities,” an ethnographic account of DIY music venues/places in the US in which he examines the interrelation between the issues of place and space, and the formation and maintenance of musical communities.

He is also a creator and an editor of an online fanzine about house concerts, HouseShowsZine, where he is collecting and publishing information about house shows and DIY venues.