Brett Pyper

(19**-) Cultural practitioner, arts administrator, festival director, music researcher and academic. He began his career as an arts administrator and facilitator of developmental music projects during the transition from apartheid before taking up a Fulbright scholarship to study in the US, where he was based for six years (1998 – 2004). He holds Master’s degrees from Emory University (in Public Culture) and New York University (in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies), and is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on contemporary jazz culture in South Africa.

Between 2005 and 2007, he headed the Division of Heritage Studies and Cultural Management in the University of the Witwatersrand School of Arts in Johannesburg, incorporating the Centre for Cultural Policy and Management. In August 2007, he was appointed CEO of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (Absa KKNK), which takes place annually at Easter time in the town of Oudtshoorn in the rural Western Cape and is currently expanding its organisational mandate as the non-profit company Kuns Onbeperk (Arts Unlimited). He held this post till the end of September, 2013.

In addition, he was founding Chair of the South African Society for Research in Music, which was formed out of the merger of the former Southern African Musicological Society and the Ethnomusicology Symposium associated with the International Library of African Music. He also serves on the steering committee of the Arterial Network, South Africa.

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