Dr. Sherri Canon

Music History, Drums

Email: canon [at] ccmcollege [dot] com

Dr. Sherri holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin . Her teaching experience includes Western music, popular music, and world music. Canon's research and publications focus on the African immigrant diaspora. Specifically, she has explored the links between music and dance, lifecycle rituals, identity, and kinship for contemporary West African immigrants in Southern California.

Canon contributed a chapter about Ghanaian and Senegalese immigrant baby naming ceremonies to the book, African Minorities in the New World (2008), and a chapter about the late Nigerian popular musician, Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, to the book, Nigeria in the Twentieth Century (2002). With twenty-eight years experience as a drummer and percussionist, she has a deep history in the Austin, Texas music scene, having performed and recorded with a number of pop and rock bands. After studying music for a year at the University of Ghana in the 1990s, she directed the African Drum Ensemble at the University of Texas and the drum and vocal ensemble, Afrodite, for several years.

A notable music teacher, Canon was awarded "Best Drum Teacher" by the Austin Chronicle. Dr. Canon also teaches music at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College.