Vincent Kelley is an ethnomusicologist, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and educator.
Vincent's research work centers on American and South Asian music, with a particular focus on jazz and North Indian music. He is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Pennsylvania. In the 2023-24 academic year, he was a Fulbright-Nehru Researcher affiliated with the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai, India.
Vincent received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Grinnell College with Honors in 2016. He was then a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar in India from 2016-17 at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. In 2019, Vincent completed a M.Mus. in Musicology and Ethnomusicology with Distinction from King’s College London, where he wrote a thesis on relationships among the tabla, dance, and folk percussion traditions in North India. Vincent also has a strong interest in Hindi, Urdu, and Persian language and literature and was an American Institute of Indian Studies Language Fellow in Lucknow, India in 2019. He has presented academic papers at conferences in the United States, India, and Ireland.
Vincent has performed on drums, tabla, trumpet, and vibraphone in jazz, Hindustani, folk, and popular music settings in the United States and India. He has shared the stage with nationally and internationally acclaimed artists including Damani Phillips, Ken Peplowski, Gabriel Espinosa, Rishitosh Kumar, Prateek Narsimha, Chuck Redd, Halie Loren, Alex Hargreaves, and Malik Flint (bLAck pARty), among others. Vincent has been a tabla disciple of Dr. Rishitosh Kumar of the Banaras gharana (lineage) since 2014. Besides his activities as a performer, he has also studied composition with Tyshawn Sorey and Mark Laver.
As an educator, he gives workshops on Indian music and has taught drums, tabla, and Hindi and Urdu language privately.
Vincent writes about culture, politics, and technology on Substack at Handful of Earth and other publications.