My experience includes the academic and public-facing work below as well as creating and writing strategic plans, budgets, press releases, and social media campaigns for museums and cultural centers. I have also written, facilitated, or assisted with over $5 million in federal, state, and private grant awards.
Original Research + Writing:
- Forthcoming chapter, Critical Music Industry Handbook, 2024
- “Book Review. Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention From Bessie Smith to Jack White by Kimberly Mack.” Journal of the Society for American Music, Vol. 17, No. 1. February 3, 2023
- “Playing live again while facing (un)safe conditions.” Working in Music International Research Network Blog, November 4, 2021
- “Beale Street Flow: Indescribability and Embodied Performance,” Society for Ethnomusicology Student News, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2020
- “Tip, Tip, Tip the Band,” Tourism RESET Blog, 2020
Presenting:
- Presenter, “Inviting Ethnographic Engagement: the Past, Present, and Future of the Patty Looman Collection at the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center,” Association for Recorded Sound Collections Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, 2023
- Invited Speaker, “Tips, Tourism, and Musical Labor on Beale Street,” West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 2023
- Presenter, “Songs in the Key of WV: Exploring the Legacy of West Virginia’s ‘Outsider’ Performers,” Appalachian Studies Association Conference, Athens, Ohio, 2023
- Invited Speaker, “Becoming Beale: The Transformation of Beale Street from a Neighborhood to a Tourist Attraction,” University of Memphis Music Department Symposium, Memphis, TN, 2021
- Presenter, “Becoming Beale: The Transformation of Beale Street from a Neighborhood to a Tourist Attraction,” International Conference on the Blues, Online, 2021
- Presenter, “Last Two Dollars: Tips, Tourism, and Musical Labor on Beale Street,” IASPM-US Conference, Online, 2021
- Invited Speaker, “Beale Street: From America’s Black Main Street to a City-Owned Tourist Attraction,” Memphis Heritage Preservation Series, Online, 2020
- Presenter, “Tips, Tourism, and Musical Labor on Beale Street,” Southeast Tourism Society Conference, Little Rock, AR, 2020
- Invited Panelist, Southeast Travel and Tourism Research Association Panels on “Marketing Niche Tourism” and “Designing Inclusive Tourism and Marketing to Diverse Audiences,” Southeast Tourism Society Conference, Little Rock, AR, 2020
- Invited Lecturer, Critical Sustainable Tourism, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 2019
- Invited Lecturer, History of the Blues, Rhodes, Memphis, TN, 2019
- Presenter, “Beale Street House Bands & Flow,” International Conference for the Blues, Cleveland, MS, 2017
- Presenter, “We’re Gettin’ Off This Street:’ Musical Labor and the Contemporary Beale Street Gig Economy,” International Conference for the Blues, Cleveland, MS, 2017
- Presenter, “Complicating Country Music,” Mid-Atlantic Chapter for the Society for Ethnomusicology, Charlottesville, VA, 2016
- Invited Lecturer, Introduction to American Music, Middlesex Community College, Bedford, MA, 2011
Also:
I am a Folkways Reporter for the WV Public Broadcasting show Inside Appalachia. If you are interested in sharing your Appalachian tradition or folkways story, contact me.
In 2021 I was honored with an Emerging Museum Professional Award and Awards of Excellence for the Morton Museum’s 2020 Social Media Campaign and “Make History: A Workbook for Junior Historians” at the Tennessee Association of Museums Conference. The book, which I co-authored, is available here.
In 2013, I was a Marketing & Digitization Intern at Smithsonian Folkways Records in Washington, D.C. where I worked on promoting their Classic Harmonica Blues release, metadata, album synopses for web, and digitization.
I have a blog that I update very infrequently. It’s here.
Lydia Warren 