Adriana Helbig is pictured above (center) with the members of Pitt's Carpathian Music Ensemble.
Assistant Professor of Music (ethnomusicology) Adriana Helbig has received a Fellowship for Fall, 2009 at the new Center for the Humanities at the University of Pittsburgh. She will use this opportunity to work on her book manuscript in progress titled Hip-Hop Revolution: Music, Race and Class in Ukraine. The book charts the growth of the popular music industry in post-socialist Ukraine, focusing in particular on the role of African migrant musicians in the development of Ukrainian hip-hop. This research has been funded by IREX, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Councils for International Education.
Along with here appointment in the Department of Music, Helbig is Affiliated Faculty with the Center for Russian and East European Studies. She holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University (2005) where she has also taught in the Ukrainian Studies Program. Her articles on Romani (Gypsy) music, post-socialist cultural policy, and global hip-hop have appeared in edited collections and journals such as Yearbook for Traditional Music, Current Musicology, and Anthropology of East Europe Review. Her first book, Culture and Customs of Ukraine, co-authored with Oksana Buranbaeva and Vanja Mladineo (Greenwood Press, 2008) was published in November, 2008.
Helbig joined the music faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in Fall 2008. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in ethnomusicology, popular music, and directs the Carpathian Music Ensemble.