Steve Loza

Professor, Ethnomusicology
Music of Latin America, Mexico, Cuba; Chicano/Latino music in the U.S.; religion as art; mestizaje; identity and marginality; cross-cultural aesthetics; ethnomusicological history and critique.
Ph.D. Music, UCLA; M.A. Latin American Studies, UCLA; B.A. Music, Cal Poly Pomona
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Steven Loza is a professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA, where he has been on the faculty for twenty-five years, and adjunct professor of music at the University of New Mexico, where he formerly directed the Arts of the Americas Institute. He has conducted extensive research in Mexico, the Chicano/Latino U.S., Cuba, among other areas, and has lectured and read papers throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He has been the recipient of Fulbright and Ford Foundation grants among numerous others, and has served on the national screening and voting committees of the Grammy Awards for fifteen years. Aside from UCLA and the University of New Mexico, he has taught at the University of Chile, Kanda University of International Studies in Japan, and the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City. His publications include two books, Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles (1993) and Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music (1999), both published by the University of Illinois Press, in addition to four anthologies, Musical Aesthetics and Multiculturalism in Los Angeles (UCLA Ethnomusicology Publications, 1994), Musical Cultures of Latin America: Global Effects, Past and Present (UCLA Ethnomusicology Publications, 2003), Hacia una musicología global: pensamientos sobre la etnomusicología (CENIDIM/CONACULTA, Mexico, in press), and Religion as Art: Guadalupe, Orishas, Sufi (University of New Mexico Press, 2009). Loza has performed a great amount of jazz and Latin jazz, has recorded two CDs, and has produced numerous concerts and arts festivals internationally, including his role as director of the UCLA Mexican Arts Series from 1986-96 and co-director of the Festival de Músicas del Mundo in Mexico City in 2000. In 2008 he produced a concert at Disney Hall in Los Angeles featuring the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra that included the world premiere of his tone poem America Tropical, a multimedia symphonic piece based on the mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros.