Portia K. Maultsby

Portia Katrenia Maultsby (born June 21, 1947) is an American ethnomusicologist and educator. She is a professor emerita at Indiana University Bloomington and specializes in African-American music. She founded the university's Archives of African American Music and Culture in 1991.

Biography

Early life and education Maultsby was born in Orlando, Florida, and grew up in the segregated American South. Her older brother was psychiatrist Maxie C. Maultsby, Jr. (1932–2016). She also had a twin brother, Casel Hayes Maultsby (1947–1988), a pilot.

Maultsby graduated from Jones High School in Orlando in 1964. She attended Mount St Scholastica College (now Benedictine College) in Atchison, Kansas, on a music scholarship, she was the first African American to be awarded that degree in the United States. She was recruited by Dr. Herman Hudson and became the founding director of the Indiana University Soul Revue, a student ensemble dedicated to Black music. She went on to become chair of the department (1985–91), then professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology (from 1992). She founded the university's Archives of African American Music and Culture in 1991, and served as its director from 1991 through 2013. and Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation (2016). She wrote the foreword to the 2018 book Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection, edited by Fernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan.

In 2011, Maultsby received an award from National Association for the Study and Performance of African American Music. Maultsby has also served as a consultant for museums (including serving as a senior scholar at the Smithsonian Institution in 1985) and as a researcher documentary films (including the PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize). She has consulted on various different projects such as The Motown Sound, Wade in the Water, and Chicago’s Record Row: The Cradle of Rhythm and Blues.

Selected works

Books

African American Music: An Introduction (co-edited with Mellonee V. Burnim), 2006. Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation (co-edited with Mellonee V. Burnim), 2016.

Book chapters

Articles