Recorded Music
 | Jason King |
Courses
The Record Producer as Creative Artist
Conversations with Today's Hitmakers
Music Moguls
Old School Hip-Hop
History & Culture of Recorded Sound
Hip-Hop History, Music, Culture
Branding
Capstone Project: Senior Colloquium
Music Recommendation & Discovery
Education
M.A./Ph.D. Performance Studies, New York University
B.F.A. Theatre, The New School
Biography
Jason King is a cultural critic & journalist, musician (performer, vocal arranger, producer, musical supervisor), manager, strategist & consultant to artists and labels, and live event producer. Founding full-time faculty member of the department; served as interim chair in 2002; and associate chair from 2003-2006, and Artistic Director from 2006-present.Teaches classes on: record producing, music moguls, branding, hip-hop, r&b and soul, jazz, Asian American and African American culture. Affiliated faculty, NYU Africana Studies; The Department of Performance Studies; NYU Abu Dhabi. Many essays on pop music in books, anthologies and journals; contributing writer for magazines/newspapers like Vibe, Blender, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and Idolator.com. Work in theatre includes "The Story of My Father" (book, music and lyrics) at The Crossroads Theater Company; "The Day Eazy-E Died" (director, sound designer) starring Anthony Mackie at the New Perspectives Theater Company, and marketing consultant on the Tony Award winning Broadway production of Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam. Pioneering approach to teaching hip-hop in the classroom has been profiled on MTV, BET, and AOL and has been invited to give lectures on popular music at universities like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and MIT. Instrumental in producing multi-day conference events at NYU such as: Sylvester: The Life and Work of a Musical Icon with Kevin Aviance and Martha Wash, Roc-a-Fella Records' 10th Anniversary with Damon Dash, The Making of Public Enemy's 'It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back' with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee, and NYU's two-week marathon festival Fest Forward: Hip-Hop Unbound. As artist manager and branding consultant, has worked with a wide roster of recording artists from cult artist Asha Puthli (Kyrone GP) to jazz legend Ornette Coleman (Sound Grammar) to Internet sensations The Craig Lewis Band to electronic music innovator Jimmy Edgar (Warp Records). Production and songwriting credits include upcoming Selan Sessions EP (Selonius Records) w/ soul music journeyman Selan and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest. As musical supervisor, keyboardist, vocalist and laptop programmer, performances include Central Park Summerstage (with DJ Spooky, Talvin Singh and Prefuse 73), Joe's Pub, and numerous other venues. Serves on the advisory board of The R&B Foundation and member of the editorial collective of Social Text. Jason's books: The Michael Jackson Treasures: Celebrating the King of Pop in Photos and Memorabilia (Fall River Press, 2009), now translated into 5 languages and in its second printing; Blue Magic: Spirit and Energy in Popular Music (Duke University Press, forthcoming). Most recent course: "Popular Music in the 21st Century" for NYU's Faculty Resource Network's 20th Anniversary. Selected to teach the inaugural class at NYU Abu Dhabi for the launch of the new campus in September 2010.
