Malamusi, Moya Aliya | Center for Black Music Research
Dr. Moya Aliya Malamusi (1959– ) is an ethnomusicologist currently teaching at the University of Salzburg and at the University of Vienna. Born in Malawi in 1959, he began his ethnographic studies through his association with Dr. Kubik, accompanying him on a trip to northwestern Zambia in 1979, and to Brazil the following year. In addition to his projects with Kubik, Malamusi has also done extensive fieldwork and research into guitar styles and techniques in southern Africa, especially 20th century innovations.
A resident of Austria since 1984, he earned his master’s degree and PhD (2004) in cultural anthropology at the University of Vienna. Malamusi has contributed articles to scientific journals, Festschrifts, and The New Grove Encyclopedia. He published a selection of his field recordings in 1999 on a CD entitled From Lake Malawi to the Zambezi (Frankfurt). Malamusi and his late sister Lidiya Malamusi founded the Oral Literature Research Programme in Chileka, Malawi in 1989, and it continues to be an important center for documenting the culture and languages of southeast Africa, holding the largest regional collection of African oral literature. In the early 1990s, Malamusi and the OLRP worked on a joint project with the African Music Archive to do field recordings of local traditional music, from traditional xylophone players to church choirs and banjo players. The archive also publishes NTAMA - The Journal of African Music and Popular Culture, to which both Kubik and Malamusi are frequent contributors.