Joti Rockwell

Assistant Professor of Music
Thatcher 108
(909) 607-7391, Email Joti Rockwell
Expertise Profile

Joti Rockwell is an Assistant Professor of Music at Pomona College, having joined the faculty in the Fall of 2007. He has taught courses in music theory (Music 4, 80, and 82), popular music (Music 68), and music and natural order (ID1-22). He does research in the realms of American popular music, mathematical music theory, roots music, rhythm and meter, genre, and analysis. He has published in Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Online, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Ethnomusicology, and he is a contributor to the upcoming second edition of The Grove Dictionary of American Music. He has presented his work at conferences of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US, the International Council for Traditional Music, the Society for American Music, the International Country Music Conference, and the Society for Ethnomusicology, as well as both national and regional meetings of the Society for Music Theory, for which he currently serves as chair of the society’s Popular Music Interest Group. He received a B.S. in Physics and Music from Haverford College in 1997, after which point he recorded and toured professionally as a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist in the acoustic duo Rockwell Church. He received his Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Music from the University of Chicago in 2007, with a dissertation examining the sonic and discursive foundations of bluegrass music. He performs roots music, bluegrass, and contemporary concert music on the acoustic guitar, mandolin, and banjo, and he has been performing as part of Pomona College’s Balinese gamelan since 2008.