Ethnomusicology Ph.D. student and Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow Dexter Story is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and producer based in Los Angeles. He has worked in multiple facets of the music industry, from marketing at Priority and Def Jam Records to talent buyer at the legendary LA venue Temple Bar. With an M.A. in African Studies and two recent East Africa-influenced albums Wondem and Bahir released on the UK-based Soundway record label, Story’s research focus is the intersection of indigenous musicality and post-colonial modernity in Northeast Africa, electric lyre innovations in the region, and the globalization of 1960s and 1970s soul music expressions. His work is grounded in the credence that, under the most inauspicious circumstances and conditions, music of Africa and African Americans defiantly embodies joy, liberation and transcendence.