Areas of Expertise
- Musicology and Ethnomusicology
- Folklore
- Music Pedagogy
- Music Performance
- Cornish Studies, Cultural Hybridity and Diaspora
Education
- Bachelor of Music, University of Denver
- Master of Music, University of Northern Colorado
Nicholas Booker is a PhD student in musicology and ethnomusicology and a graduate research associate with the Center for Folklore Studies. His research interests include postnational and transnational musical identities, tradition, heritage, commodification and globalization. He is currently focused on interactions between folk and traditional music communities in the Great Lakes region of North America and Cornwall in the southwest of Britain.
In 2024, he was the recipient of both The Ohio State University Graduate Achievement Award in Musicology and the Patrick B. Mullen Graduate Prize in folklore for his paper “Cornish Connections: Song and Affect in a Glocal Music Industry.” He has worked with scholars including Brian Casey, Nancy Glen, Jonathan Bellman, Mark Montemayor and Jittapim Yamprai. He served on the Performing Arts Committee at the Center for Arts and Community Enrichment (Fort Morgan, Colorado) for four years, and has been associated with the International Council for Traditional Music, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, the American Folklore Society, the National Association for Music Education, the Colorado Music Educators Association, and the Denver Musicians Association. He has presented original research at a wide variety of conferences listed below, and has written for both academic and public-facing publications.
Nicholas has a passion for music instruction and has applied it to varied contexts including his four years as jazz ensemble instructor at Morgan Community College; two years as K–12 music teacher at the Converge School and Day Treatment Center; and eleven years of private music instruction in flute, guitar, piano and songwriting. He performed for six years with the 101st Army Band of the Colorado Army National Guard, and started his own indie folk music group, All Those Who Wander, in 2011. He has studied flute with Paul Nagem, Pamela Endsley and Richard Blake, and has attended masterclasses with Robert Winn, Karen Jones, Kate Hill, Caroline Hobbs-Smith and Marianne Gedigian, among others. He studied conducting with Dr. Richard Mayne and Dr. Kevin Padworski. He has engaged with folk and traditional music in varied contexts in North America and Britain, particularly with the Columbus Folk Music Society and festivals in Cornwall in Britain including the Golowan midsummer festival and the Cornwall Folk Festival.
Selected Publications and Presentations
- Booker, Nicholas. Review of Going Up the Country: Adventures in Blues Fieldwork in the 1960s, by Marina Bokelman and David Evans. Journal of American Folklore 137, no. 544 (Spring 2024): 248–249. https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/article/927394.
- Booker, Nicholas. Review of The Berkeley Folk Music Festival & the Folk Revival on the US West Coast—An Introduction, by Northwestern University. Journal of the Society for American Music (February 26, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196323000391.
- Booker, Nicholas. “Homes for Cornish Folk Music in Britain and North America.” Columbus Folk Music Society A Different Strummer Newsletter (February 2024): 4–5. https://www.columbusfolkmusicsociety.org/NEWSLETTERS/February2024.pdf?fbclid=IwAR12ykXwNXgbI6t2j1TZNwMfKDUeJbt-EuWUMfgVCpaZNAzqgNhoNCRhz14.
- Booker, Nicholas. “Ottoma dhe’n Yeth Kernewek: Cornish Language Song in North America.” The Institute of Cornish Studies: Cornish Language and Dialect (Februrary 2024). https://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/centres/ics/research/cornishlanguageanddialect/song/?fbclid=IwAR06Q1kYZ5QMDBAgce5fz3xXnV0cIi3outb2AnzQdo5Ay9ftU_q5G2UB__I.
- “'The Funniest Dream of All:' Rooting Futures in Cornish and North American Songs,” British Forum for Ethnomusicology & International Council for Traditional Music Ireland Joint-Annual Conference, Cork, Ireland, April 5, 2024.
- “Pride and Saint Piran’s Cross: Queerness and Contested Futures in North America’s Cornish Diaspora,” American Folklore Society national conference, Portland, Oregon, USA, November 4, 2023.
- “Cornish Connections: Song and Affect in a Glocal Music Industry,” Society for Ethnomusicology national conference, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, September 18th, 2023.
- “Don’t Doubt Us: The Malawian Madalitso Band in Britain” presented at the University of Toronto Graduate Music Conference; Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 3/19/2023
- Review of Celtic Music and Dance in Cornwall: Cornu-copia, by Lea Hagmann. Ethnomusicology Forum (February 2022). https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2033631.
- “Development and Interactions of Instructor and Student Musical Identities in a University Introductory Music Course for Non-music Majors.” Master’s thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 2021. ProQuest (AAT 28496301). http://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/development-interactions-instructor-student/docview/2546612232/se-2?accountid=9783.
- “Celtic Columbus: Musical Interactions Between Wales, Ireland, and Columbus, Ohio” presented at the “(Re)Connecting Community” conference hosted by Indiana University and The Ohio State University, 4/1/2022