Dr. Kevin Delgado
Associate Professor
School of Music and Dance
College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts
SDSU
Bio
Kevin M. Delgado is Associate Professor Emeritus of Music, former Coordinator of World Music and Ethnomusicology at San Diego State University, and former Director of the School of Music and Dance. Before coming to SDSU he served as Assistant Professor of Music at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Delgado traveled to Cuba eleven times to conduct research on Afro-Cuban music, religion, and culture. His essays have appeared in Black Music Research Journal, Cuba in the Special Period: Culture and Ideology in the 1990s (Palgrave-MacMillan), Resiliency and Distinction: Belief, Endurance and Creativity in the Musical Arts of Continental and Diasporic Africa (MRI), Speaking with Wood: Transatlantic Perspectives on Ayan and Drumming for the Orisa (Mississippi), Cuba in a Global Context: International Relations, Internationalism, and Transnationalism (Florida), Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, and A Contracorriente. Delgado also contributed entries on Latin Jazz and Latin American Music to the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World and ABC-Clio’s World History Encyclopedia.
Delgado teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on a wide variety of topics covering the music of the world and the intersection between music, culture, politics, identity, history, and technology, including the nation’s first history course focusing on disco music.
As a bass guitarist and percussionist, Delgado has shared the stage with Justo Almario, Tito Puente, Francisco Aguabella, Sergio Mendes, Cliff Almond, and Peter Sprague, among others. Delgado directed student Latin jazz and Latin percussion ensembles, and in 2004 he co-directed a faculty/student jazz ensemble on a United States State Department tour of Bolivia. From January 2021 to August 2026 he served as Director of the School of Music and Dance.
Delgado earned a B.M. degree in jazz performance from San Diego State University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Education
- PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
- MA, University of California, Los Angeles
- BM, San Diego State University
