Ethnomusicologist · Librarian · Preservationist · Soundmaker
Lowell Lybarger
A creator and curator whose life bridges music, audio preservation, archiving and acoustic anthropology.
Decades of musical exploration, field recordings, experiments and artifacts, and the stories behind them. Whether digging through forgotten tapes, documenting culture through music, or creating something entirely new, Lowell treats audio like a language worth preserving.
Where shall we begin?
Four ways into the work
Listen and watch
The Soundmaker
Composing, experimenting and building something unexpected. Work that blurs the line between creation and discovery.
Rescue and restore
The Preservationist
Fragile tapes, rare recordings and disappearing musical histories, restored so they can be heard for years to come.
Organize and open up
The Librarian
Tracking down lost recordings, organizing large collections and giving them context, structure and open access.
Listen in the field
The Acoustic Anthropologist
Ethnomusicology fieldwork on how communities create, adapt and pass music down, driven by respect for the voices behind the songs.
Selected highlights
From fieldwork to the library
2007–
Media Librarian, Arkansas Tech University
Director of the ATU Media Production Lab.
2018
Chair, Film and Media Round Table
American Library Association (Vice-Chair 2017, Treasurer 2015–16).
2008
Lowell H. Lybarger Pakistani Music Collection
Field recordings and documentation preserved at Harvard University Library.
2006
Preservation project, Radio-Television Afghanistan
Technical consultant and archivist, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
2004, 2007
UNESCO consultant and professor in musicology
National College of Arts and Sanjan Nagar Institute of Philosophy and Arts, Lahore.
2003
Ph.D., University of Toronto
The Tabla Solo Repertoire of Pakistani Panjab: an Ethnomusicological Perspective.
1994–96
Fulbright fieldwork in Pakistan
Studied with tabla master Ustad Shaukat Hussain Khan and documented Pakistani Panjab tabla music.
Listen