Michael B MacDonald
“Though he does have a beard, Professor MacDonald is not a tweed suit wearing dour academic, rather his passion for cinema and music has led him to the streets, showcasing the hardscrabble life of artists attempting to win fans one gig at a time.” CKUA radio, Alberta
Michael B. MacDonald is an award-winning cine-ethnomusicologist, associate professor of music, and Chancellor’s Research Chair in the MacEwan University Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications located in Amiskwacâskahikan, what settlers call Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
His ongoing cinematic research-creation work investigates the interface of music ethnography and cinema production as documented in “CineWorlding: Scenes of Cinematic Research-Creation” published by Bloomsbury Press in 2023. MacDonald’s films have screened at more than 80 film festivals winning documentary and experimental film awards.
He has published widely on music studies, youth culture, and cine-ethnographic and cine-ethnomusicological theory with book chapters included in influential handbooks. He is the author of “Playing for Change” (2016), “Remix and Lifehack in Hip Hop” (2016), and co-editor for “A History of Progressive Music and Youth Culture” (2020).
Michael is a member of the program committee for KISMIF an international conference on DIY music and culture, a member of the scientific committee for combArt, an active member of the International Council of Traditional Music Study Group on Audiovisual Ethnomusicology (affiliated with UNESCO), co-founder of the Justice4Reel Media Advocacy Free School, and is currently the Film and Video Editor for the Yearbook For Traditional Music and a member of the editorial board for the journal DIY, Alternative Cultures and Society.
Michael uses CineWorlding and Specualtive Worldings to tell stories about affective worldings that are difficult to tell in print. Through screenplays and improvisational films, co-realized with musicians and social actors, Michael helps to create opporutnities for audiences to feel worlds and lives in ways that writing alone cannot.
He seeks to understand worldings as ecological attuments, an event made up of four ecologies (psychic/conceptual, social, technological, and environmental) and the ways biospheres, technospheres, mediaspheres, and their complex web of interrelations can be investigated through cinematic world building. He believes that digital cinema has the power to help people learn more about each other and the world.