Daniel T. Neely is a musician and ethnomusicologist. He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 2008 and his dissertation “Mento, Jamaica’s Original Music”: “Development, Tourism and the Nationalist Frame” was written with the support of a Fulbright Grant and NYU’s Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship. His research has appeared in a number of books, including Victorian Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2018), Jamaica Jamaica! (Philharmonie de Paris, 2017), Sun, Sea and Sound: Music and Tourism in the Circum-Caribbean (Oxford University Press, 2014; also, co-edited with Tim Rommen), Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean (Temple University Press, 2009; co-authored with Ken Bilby) and the Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (Garland, 2008); and journals, such as Caribbean Quarterly and the Caribbean Studies Journal. In addition, Daniel helped organize and lectured at the Institute of Jamaica’s 2017 Grounation conference on mento and he was the banjo player and music director for the Jolly Boys 2010 album, Great Expectations. Finally, Daniel plays traditional Irish music and writes about the subject weekly for the Irish Echo newspaper. His academic research in the area focuses on the history of Irish music in Boston 1890-1930 and he has presented his work at Boston College, the Catskills Irish Arts Week, the Ward Irish Music Archives and elsewhere.
