Patricia Tang

Tang received her PhD in Music from Harvard University in 2001. Since then, she has taught at MIT in the Music & Theater Arts Section, where she is currently Associate Professor of Music and also serves as the Associate Head of the Music program. Tang is a MacVicar Faculty Fellow as well as a past recipient of both the SHASS Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching and the AAUW American Postdoctoral Fellowship.

At MIT, Tang regularly teaches subjects including Introduction to Musics of the World, Musics of Africa, and Popular Musics of the World. She also serves as faculty advisor to Rambax, MIT’s Senegalese Drum Ensemble. She has co-organized and co-led study abroad programs in Senegal through MIT and Boston University.

Tang is the author of Masters of the Sabar: Wolof Griot Percussionists of Senegal (Temple University Press, 2007) and has also published in several edited volumes, encyclopedias, and journals including Ethnomusicology, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, and African Music. Her current research focuses on the globalization of Afropop music and African immigrant musicians in the diaspora. Tang plays sabar drums with Rambax MIT, and as a violinist and keyboardist has performed and recorded with Nder et le Setsima Group, Positive Black Soul, Balla Tounkara, Balla Kouyaté, and Lamine Touré & Group Saloum.