About Kevin:

Kevin Parme (PhD, 2022) is Texas Folklife’s Grants Coordinator. Parme began his work in the non-profit sector in 2012 with a year-long internship at Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the national museum. From 2014-2015, he served as the Sales and Marketing Coordinator for Texas Folklife and has collaborated with the organization on several projects since then. In 2022, he received his PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin. His doctoral research explores the role of indigenous Oaxacan brass and wind bands in Mexican educational initiatives of the early 20th century and considers the legacies of such programs in the present day.

As a graduate student, he received funding from the Tinker Foundation, the Rainwater Fund for American Music, and the E.D. Farmer Fellowship. He also received a Foreign Language Area Studies grant to study Ayuujk, the indigenous language of the Mixe indigenous group. Parme has presented his research at regional and national conferences, and his writings have appeared in Ethnomusicology Student News and the Latin American Music Review.