Professor Kun’s research focuses on the arts and politics of cultural connection, with an emphasis on popular music, the cultures of globalization, the US-Mexico border, and Jewish-American musical history. He is director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg’s The Norman Lear Center and co-editor of the book series “Refiguring American Music” for Duke University Press. He founded the USC Annenberg Distinguished Lecture Series on Latin American Arts & Culture, which he now runs in collaboration with the USC Latino Alumni Association.

Prior to joining the USC Annenberg School, Kun was Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He holds a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. A former Arts Writers Fellow with The Sundance Institute and a former fellow of the Ucross Foundation and The Mesa Refuge, he is the author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (UC Press), which won a 2006 American Book Award. He is co-author of And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past As Told By The Records We’ve Loved and Lost (Crown, 2008), editor of The Song is Not The Same: Jews and American Popular Music (Purdue UP), co-editor of Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies (John Hopkins), and wrote the introduction to the re-publication of Papa, Play For Me (Wesleyan University Press), the autobiography of musical comedian Mickey Katz.

His articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues, covering everything from the music of the Mexican border and the lost histories of Jewish mambo and Jewish jazz, to African-American and Latina/o musical exchange in Los Angeles. He has written the liner notes to CDs by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Sammy Davis Jr., and Maldita Vecindad.

In 2012, he curated “Trouble in Paradise: Music and Los Angeles 1945-75,” a landmark exhibition at The Grammy Museum that was part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative. His audio installation “Latin-Esque” was included in the 2011 exhibition MEX/LA: Mexican Modernism(s) in Los Angeles 1930-1985, and his audio-visual installation “Last Exit USA” was commissioned by Steve Turner Contemporary and later appeared at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. With design historian and TASCHEN editor Jim Heimann, he co-curated The Donkey Show at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. He co-organized the USC/LACMA/LAUSD project The Corrido of L.A. and curated a 2011 collaboration with Grand Performances on the history of The Phillips Music Company in Boyle Heights. With USC Annenberg students, he is currently collaborating with The Library Foundation of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Public Library on “Songs in the Key of L.A.,” a multimedia exploration of Los Angeles through its vintage sheet music.

In 2005, he co-founded The Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, a non-profit organization dedicated to excavating lost treasures of Jewish-American music. The Society re-issues classic albums and the stories behind them; manages a digital based archive of the music and the artists who created it in order to preserve their legacy for future generations; curates museum exhibits like Jews on Vinyl and Black Sabbath that showcase the stories behind the music, and organize concerts which bring the 80 and 90 year old performers back on stage before a young audience at venues like Lincoln Center in New York, Skirball in Los Angeles and Yoshi’s in San Francisco.

As a critic and journalist, Kun has contributed to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The American Prospect, Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, and other publications. From 1998-2006, he wrote “Frequencies,” a bi-weekly music column published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Boston Phoenix. His writing has also appeared in Tu Ciudad Los Angeles, Cabinet, The Believer, Guilt & Pleasure, Village Voice, SPIN, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, SPIN, and in Mexico’s La Jornada and Proceso. On the radio, has been a frequent commentator for National Public Radio, BBC, KPCC, and WNYC.

His journalism on the US-Mexico border earned him a 2007 Unity Award in Media and made him a finalist for a 2007 Southern California Journalism Award.

In 2005, Kun was a regular critic on The Movie Show With John Ridley on American Movie Classics, and he has also appeared as a culture critic on ABC, The Disney Channel, National Geographic TV, UPN, Fox Latin America, BBC Radio, and National Public Radio. From 1999-2000, he hosted The Red Zone, Southern California’s first commercial Latin Rock radio program, on 107.1 FM and in 2002 was the show’s host on MTV-español. From 2003-2005, he hosted and associate produced Rokamole, a weekly Latin alternative music video show on KJLA-LATV.

He serves on the board of Dublab and on the editorial boards of American Quarterly, The International Journal of Communication, Boom: A Journal of California, and The Journal of Popular Music Studies. He has also worked as a consultant and curator with Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Autry National Center, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

This is an excerpt of Lesson 1 of GRAMMY U^®’s Summer School Series annotated by the presenters themselves, DJ/Producer J. Period and USC Professor Josh Kun.

The live event will take place Wednesday, July 24 from 5-7pm PST at Red Bull Headquarters in Santa Monica. You can watch the performance at the GRAMMY’s Google+ Hangout.

Purchase Book at Amazon.

The City Lights bookstore blog posted this Langston Hughes poem after the acquittal of George Zimmerman. We thought we’d give folks a chance to annotate it too.