Michael Birenbaum Quintero is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology at New York University. He has published in English and Spanish in Anthropological  Quarterly, Revista TRANS,  and elsewhere, and has collaborated with the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, the Colombian Ministry of Culture, the Smithsonian Folkways music label, the Universidad Tecnológica del Chocó, and Proceso de Comunidades Negras, an Afro-Colombian activist organization. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships including the Fulbright IIE Grant, the NYU Humanities Research Fellowship, and the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Charles Seeger  Prize for most distinguished student paper. He has worked closely with Afro-Colombian musicians, and is the founder and director of NYU’s Afro-Colombian Marimba Ensemble. He is currently completing his dissertation on multiculturalism, the Afro-Colombian political movement, and “currulao” music, titled “Déjame Subir/Let Me Rise”: The Musical Making of Race and Place in Colombia’s Black Pacific.