Cheryl L. Keyes

Biography

Cheryl L. Keyes is the author of Rap Music and Street Consciousness (University of Illinois Press), which received a CHOICE award for outstanding academic book titles. She has written numerous journal articles, essays, and reviews on hip-hop/rap and African American music and served on the Executive Committee for the Smithsonian Folkways Recording and the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s nine CD box set project, Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap.  On other fronts, Dr. Keyes has been featured in public facing platforms as a critic and cultural consultant for the television mini-series documentary, Death Row Chronicles (BET) and for DreamWorks Animation’s film, Trolls World Tour (Universal Pictures), respectively.

Keyes’s scholarship has advanced into other areas including producing, writing, and directing a documentary (short) called Beyond Central Avenue: Contemporary Female Jazz Instrumentalists of Los Angeles. In addition, she has served as musical director for the “Lady Jazz: Blues in the Summertime” concert, commissioned by Instrumental Women Project™ for its Lady Jazz summer concert series held at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre and created and produced the concerts Swinging to a World of Strings, presented at UCLA’s Schoenberg Auditorium and supported by the David and Irmgard Dobrow Fund, and Prelude to Juneteenth Day Celebration: A Multimedia Event, held at the iconic Royce Hall, becoming UCLA’s inaugural Juneteenth Day celebration event.

In the area of performance, Professor Keyes is a pianist, flutist, singer, and composer with a list of credits. Most noted are performances with the All-Girl All-Star Invitational Band under the direction of the legendary jazz flugelhornist Clark Terry, and a featured artist-composer on The Other Side of Eddie Bo with New Orleans rhythm and blues icon Eddie Bo. She has recorded with jazz clarinetist-educator Alvin Batiste in which Keyes performs keyboards on Batiste’s debut album, Musique D’Afrique Nouvelle Orleans. She is a recipient of numerous awards: NAACP Image Award in the category of “Outstanding World Music Album” for her debut CD, Let Me Take You There (Keycan Records); Global Music Award Silver Medal for “Outstanding Achievement” for her double-single CD Hollywood and Vine (Keycan Records), and the Indiana University’s Herman C. Hudson Alumni Award.

Under leadership, Professor Keyes is currently chair of the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. She was conferred an Honorary Membership in the Society for Ethnomusicology for her “decades of path-breaking scholarship on music, the African American community as well as for her longstanding service to the Society.”  Keyes has served in other capacities. They include as President of the US Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US) and as a member of the Board of Directors for the SEM; UCLA Academic Senate Committees: chair of the Faculty Executive Committee for the School of Arts and Architecture at UCLA; Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA; Inaugural Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music; and Director of Graduate Studies and Vice Chair for the Department of Ethnomusicology.