Dr. Maya Cunningham is an ethnomusicologist, an Africana Studies scholar, a gospel jazz vocalist, and a cultural activist. She is a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a scholar, her research focus is on African American cultural identity and traditional African and African American musics. She is an expert in African American music and expressive culture, African American history, African American jazz, South African jazz and early African American traditional musics. She is a staunch believer in and advocate of culturally centered, affirming and responsive music and arts education for Afro-descendant students, and children from marginalized ethnic groups, as well as multi-cultural education that benefits all students. Her cultural activism includes public impact work like designing ethnomusicology-driven curricula and programs based in Black music, and other world music traditions, to advance culturally centered music education for students from marginalized ethnic groups. She also curates exhibitions, public programs and broadcast media about Black music and culture. She founded the Esther Movement out of concern for the current attacks on African American Civil Rights and the advantages and gains that resulted because of the 1960s and 1970s Civil Rights Movement.
In May 2025 Cunningham will receive a PhD in African American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her PhD studies include graduate certificates in Ethnomusicology, African Diaspora Studies, Public History, and Ethnographic Research. She has earned three Masters of Arts degrees: an MA in Afro-American Studies from UMass Amherst, an MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an MA in jazz performance from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. She received a Bachelor of Music in jazz studies from Howard University. Cunningham received a 2022 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and a Fulbright research fellowship in 2017. She has presented her research and writing at conferences nationally and internationally.
In 2022 Cunningham published, “The Hush Harbor as Sanctuary: African American Survival Silence During British/American Slavery,” in Sonic Histories of Occupation: Sound and Imperialism in Global Context (Taylor and Skelchy, eds: Bloomsbury, 2022). Another book chapter, “Singing Power/Sounding Identity: The Black Woman's Voice from Hush Harbors and Beyond” is included in The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories, edited by Janell Hobson (2021). She has also published public-facing work, like curated playlists and accompanying essays “A People In Flight: African Americans in Movement” and “A Black History Month Sound Collage” for Smithsonian Folkways Records. Cunningham also published the groundbreaking article “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman” in Ms. Magazine in March 2022.
In May 2025 Cunningham will receive a PhD in African American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her PhD studies include graduate certificates in Ethnomusicology, African Diaspora Studies, Public History, and Ethnographic Research. She has earned three Masters of Arts degrees: an MA in Afro-American Studies from UMass Amherst, an MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an MA in jazz performance from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. She received a Bachelor of Music in jazz studies from Howard University. Cunningham received a 2022 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and a Fulbright research fellowship in 2017. She has presented her research and writing at conferences nationally and internationally.
In 2022 Cunningham published, “The Hush Harbor as Sanctuary: African American Survival Silence During British/American Slavery,” in Sonic Histories of Occupation: Sound and Imperialism in Global Context (Taylor and Skelchy, eds: Bloomsbury, 2022). Another book chapter, “Singing Power/Sounding Identity: The Black Woman's Voice from Hush Harbors and Beyond” is included in The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories, edited by Janell Hobson (2021). She has also published public-facing work, like curated playlists and accompanying essays “A People In Flight: African Americans in Movement” and “A Black History Month Sound Collage” for Smithsonian Folkways Records. Cunningham also published the groundbreaking article “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman” in Ms. Magazine in March 2022.