Divine Kwasi Gbagbo earned his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts), with specialized focus in Ethnomusicology and Musicology, from Ohio University. His published Ph.D. dissertation entitled, “Rites, Recreation, and... Rulership: Christianity and Ewe Music of Ghana” examined the understudied relationship between Christianity and Ghanaian Ewe musical practices. He received a Master’s Degree in Ethnomusicology from Kent State University and a Bachelor of Education degree in Music and Ghanaian Languages (Ewe) Education at the University College of Education in Winneba, Ghana. Gbagbo’s varied levels of expertise in scholarship, research, teaching, and performance has given him more than two decades of teaching experience in world music cultures, African and African American music, music history, African studies, and interdisciplinary arts in different cultural contexts.
His research interests include the postcolonial influence and its ramifications on musical traditions of the Ewe of Ghana and Togo. He is also interested in the way African music performance in the twenty-first century contributes to narratives and theorizations of continuity and change in the diaspora. As a composer of choral art music, Gbagbo blends indigenous Ghanaian-Ewe compositional styles with the acquired Western conventional composition techniques.
