Christopher King

Christopher C. King is an ethnomusicologist, writer, producer, and advocate of traditional music. Over the course of twenty-five years, he has produced 353 CD collections of historical folk music from around the world. In 2002 he won a Grammy Award in the Best Historical Album category and has been nominated seven more times. In 2018 he wrote a book about the traditional folk music of northwestern Greece, “Lament from Epirus” (published by W. W. Norton & Company), and in the same year it was translated into Greek by DOMA publications (Greek title: Ηπειρώτικο Μοιρολόι). Mr. King’s book and related traditional southern Balkan music collections have received widespread critical success. Over the last twelve years, he has brought international attention to the ‘mirologi’ of Epirus, the songs and dances of Greece, and the deep cultures that still thrive in the southern Balkans. Bringing The New York Times to Epirus in 2014, coordinating a major documentary in the region in 2017, and presenting the music of Greece across Europe and America from 2018-2024, Mr. King is a tireless and devoted advocate of the music of the southern Balkans.

Mr. King has worked as a digital preservation specialist for the Library of Congress and the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture. Additionally, he has been a professional museum consultant in the United States and has presented his work in a variety of publications and venues including TEDx, the New York Public Library, the Gennadius Library, Megaron–Athens Concert Hall Music Library (with Lambros Liavas), the Library of Congress, and the “Paris Review of Books.” He is the editor (chair) of the illustrious “Association for Recorded Sound Collections” journal. Over the course of the last ten years, he has built the largest, most complete collection of southern Balkan music on the 78-rpm disc format. In the spring of 2022, Mr. King was awarded a Public Diplomacy Grant by the US State Department to deliver lectures in Greece on the contributions of Greek-Jewish women to Greek folk music. In the summer of 2022, he was awarded honorary Greek citizenship for his work in promoting the music of Greece. In the fall of 2022, he managed the US tour of Isokratisses, an all-woman ensemble of Greek-Albanian polyphonic singers. Since 2023, King has curated Onassis Stegi’s internationally acclaimed three-day festival “Why the Mountains are Black” in Konitsa, Epirus.