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E-Mail: matsuej@union.edu
Phone: (518) 388-8075

Jennifer Milioto Matsue (B.A. Wellesley College and M.A. and Ph.D. University of Chicago) is an ethnomusicologist specializing in modern Japanese music and culture. She has conducted research on a variety of music cultures in contemporary Japan including the Tokyo hardcore rock scene, nagauta (a type of traditional chamber music featuring the three-string lute shamisen), raves, the increasingly popular world of taiko (Japanese ensemble drumming), and Vocaloid Hatsune Miku. She is interested in how performers find meaning through participating in such worlds, with a particular focus on women’s roles in music making. She is the author of the monograph Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene (Routledge 2008) and Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan (Routledge 2015), as well as several articles on related topics. She is now embarking on new research entitled The Beat, Body and Brain: Musical Interludes with the Horse—a multifaceted project grounded in three distinct, yet interrelated fieldwork sites: classical and competitive dressage (two correlated forms of equine training that emphasize the musical concepts of rhythm, tempo, and cadence); creative artistic-choreography for horses and humans; and the impact of music and movement therapies on the rapidly expanding field of equine assisted therapy. This research sits at the intersection of varied disciplines including cognitive musicology, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience that collectively will speak to ethnomusicologists; humanists more broadly interested in music, the brain and the animal-human bond; and equestrian enthusiasts alike. She is Chair of the Department of Music, Director of the World Musics and Cultures Program, and serves as Professor in Music, Asian Studies, and Anthropology at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Biography – Updated on January 2022