Harald Kisiedu is a musicologist, author and saxophonist. In his research, he deals intensively with the history of experimental jazz, with a particular focus on black free jazz traditions. He sees his work explicitly as an intervention in established narratives and historiographical perspectives. In the tenth edition of the key_concepts series, he talks to Mathias Maschat about improvisation history as an intervention.
Kisiedu studied political science and German studies in Hamburg and went on to complete a doctorate in historical musicology at the renowned Columbia University in New York under George Lewis. A postdoctoral fellowship took him to the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation in Canada.
Based on his dissertation, he published the book European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany, 1950–1975 with Wolke Verlag in 2020. The study questions common emancipation narratives of European free music in terms of the idea of intervention and reveals a previously overlooked history of black musical symbolism. It also addresses the influences of Afrodiasporic for white European improvisers and categorises them in terms of music history and cultural studies.
In 2023, Wolke Verlag published the anthology Composing While Black. Afrodiasporische Neue Musik Heute. Afrodiasporic New Music Today, which he co-edited with George Lewis. This book also sees itself as a critical intervention: on the one hand, it makes visible the epistemic structures through which Afrodiasporic composers are marginalised in new music and, on the other hand, creates space for their visibility and recognition.
Kisiedu publishes regularly in specialist journals and magazines such as The Wire, The Grove Dictionary of American Music, Critical Studies in Improvisation, Journal der Künste, Van Outernational, Darmstädter Beiträge zur Jazzforschung, the Jazzfest Berlin magazine and Ensemble Modern Magazin.
As a saxophonist he has worked with Champion Jack Dupree, Hannibal Lokumbe, Branford Marsalis, George Lewis, Henry Grimes and Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber.
