Kyra Gaunt

Ethnomusicologist

TED Fellow Kyra Gaunt is an ethnomusicologist.

Why you should listen

Kyra Gaunt is a Black feminist scholar illuminating sexploitation and patriarchal violence against marginalized girls in music and tech. She is currently launching a podcast and working to publish her second book, Played: How Music and Tech Orchestrate Violence Against Black Girls Online.

Kyra Gaunt’s TED Talks

Kyra Gaunt
How the jump rope got its rhythm
3 minutes 22 seconds
"Down down, baby, down down the roller coaster..." Hip-hop owes a lot to the queens of double dutch. Ethnomusicologist Kyra Gaunt takes us on a tour of the fascinating history of the jump rope.
Posted Mar 2018
Kyra Gaunt
How Black girls can reclaim their voice in music
6 minutes 56 seconds
How does music shape us? Digital ethnomusicologist and TED Fellow Kyra Gaunt studies how Black girls can preserve the integrity of their own voices while listening, dancing and singing to pop songs largely engineered by men, often with lyrics that express anti-Black, patriarchal sentiments. In a quick, incisive talk, she shows how Black girls can disrupt the stereotypes and stigmas buried within this music and chart their own revolution in sound.
Posted Jun 2022

Kyra Gaunt

Why you should listen

Kyra Gaunt’s TED Talks

More news and ideas from Kyra Gaunt

A New Era: Notes from Session 1 of TED Fellows Talks at TED2022

Want to do more to fight racism? TED speakers suggest ways to educate, activate and donate

A powerful letter from my great-great-grandfather, who escaped slavery in 1855