Dr. Colter Harper

I see teaching in the Art Department as an opportunity to explore photography as both an art form and tool of musical and sociological research. As a musician, I look for ways to "listen" to photographs. My current research on jazz in Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood draws extensively from the Charles "Teenie" Harris photo archive. I've used images from this archive in "photo elicitation" interviews and as historical documents that contribute to understanding jazz as musical labor and spatial practice.

Colter Harper is an American ethnomusicologist and guitarist whose research interests include jazz and urban American history, music and labor, music pedagogy in Ghana, music and technology, composition, and improvisation. In January 2020, Harper completed a seventeen-month Fulbright Scholar position in the University of Ghana’s Department of Music. His research from this and previous trips to Ghana bridge music production, audio archiving, and modern musical practice in Accra. Currently he is completing a book on the history of jazz in Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood. Harper completed his PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh in 2011 and has performed in Ghana and the US. In 2007, Colter joined the multi-platinum selling, world music influenced rock band Rusted Root as a guitarist, percussionist, and vocalist. He recorded on the band's latest albums Stereo Rodeo and The Movement, and performed with the band nationally until the summer of 2013.​ He has also produced two records of his own compositions: Once Upon a Mind (2007) and Fool's Resolution (2013).