Guthrie Ramsey

A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. is a music historian, pianist, composer, and Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.  He’s the author of Who Hears Here: On Black Music Pasts and Present, The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History and the Challenge of Bebop, and Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop. Ramsey has released five recording projects, including A Spiritual Vibe, vol. 1 and has performed at The Blue Note, The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and Harlem Stage. He scored the 2019 prize-winning documentary Making Sweet Tea and the choreopoem, The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body in 2024. Ramsey co-curated the exhibition Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment and was a consultant for the 2020 Emmy Award-winning documentary Apollo: The Soul of American Culture.