Steven Friedson: From ‘Louie, Louie' crooner to respected ethnomusicologist

	Steven Friedson, professor of ethnomusicology, teaches courses on the music of many different cultures, but he is an expert in the field of African music.

Steven Friedson, professor of ethnomusicology at UNT, just returned from a trip to Ghana, West Africa, where he led a group of students who participated in lectures, researched religious practices and observed musical rituals of the indigenous people there. He is an expert on African music.

"I always had this thing about Africa," he says. "Ever since I was 5, watching Tarzan movies, I was mesmerized."

Friedson has taken 10 groups to Africa to study the culture there and is finishing his second book, Northern Gods in a Southern Land, about musical healing and the rituals of the native people of Africa. In his field, he has become a highly respected authority.

Friedson's research interests include music and healing, phenomenology and rhythmic theory. He received a Fulbright research fellowship to Malawi in 1987 and published his research results in the book Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing with the University of Chicago Press in 1996.

However, Friedson's musical history is a bit different from that of most of his academic colleagues. From 1966 to 1976, he was a member of the Kingsmen, a band famous for its rendition of "Louie, Louie." Friedson wasn't an original member, but he toured with the band for 10 years, enjoying and despising life on the road.

"On stage there's a rush, playing for crowds of 10,000 people," he says. "But after that, the food is bad, and all the hotels start to look the same."

At one time, the Kingsmen were the No. 1 touring band in the United States. They were billed as an American backlash to the famed "British invasion."

"I first joined the Kingsmen when I was 18 or 19," says Friedson. "Their keyboard player had been drafted to Vietnam, and they were looking for a replacement."

After quitting high school, Friedson played in a number of bands in the Midwest. At the time he was contacted by the Kingsmen, he was playing a Hammond B-3 organ for a band called the Epics.

After living the rock-and-roll lifestyle for almost 10 years, Friedson decided to go back to school. In 1981 he graduated from the Cornish Institute of the Arts, and in 1991 he received a doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington. Friedson has been a professor at UNT since 1989.

"Steve Friedson is a wonderful colleague, an outstanding teacher and a brilliant scholar, recognized throughout the world as a top authority on African music," says Lester Brothers, professor of musicology. "His years of work here at UNT are showing fruition in the establishment of a graduate degree in ethnomusicology for the College of Music anticipated this year."

Friedson is happy that he has experienced both ends of the musical spectrum, but he feels he's better off now.

"About once a week, I wake up and thank God that I'm a professor," he says. "I can't imagine being 54 and still out on the road. I know some of my old band mates are still touring, but that lifestyle just isn't for me anymore."

BY PETER HOFSTAD paiswri2@unt.edu

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• UNT study questions sizing methods in women's apparel
• UNT historian says familiar Halloween icon came from history's witch hunts
• Staff members honored at annual convocation
• UNT crime statistics available online
• Campus events planned for Halloween
• UNT to host conference on green building
• Faculty, staff encouraged to participate in parking and transportation survey
• Competition at UNT to rival TV's popular robot wars

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