Dr Oladele Ayorinde, a music scholar and cultural economist, is a  Research Fellow at the Africa Open Institute. His research is situated at the intersection of music, sound, archival management/curatorial practice, African and African diasporic music studies, critical global Black studies, and the anthropological study of value and political economy. Oladele has held teaching and research positions at universities in Africa, Europe, and North America, including Tübingen University and the University of Bonn in Germany; Indiana University, Bloomington in the United States; the University of the Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch University in South Africa; and Mountain Top University in Nigeria. Located primarily in South Africa and Nigeria, Oladele’s research explores the creative and artistic processes of music-making and, through music, seeks to understand complex social, political, and economic processes in contemporary Africa and the African diaspora. He has published in journals, including Ethnomusicology Forum, Jazz and Culture, South African Music Studies (SAMUS), Leeds African Studies Bulletin, and Musik & Ästhetik. His research is concerned with social transformation, the political economy of everyday life, social justice, equity, and diversity while also promoting public-facing/public sector work, music industry practices/knowledge, community outreach/advocacy, and empowerment of marginalized people. Oladele’s professional works cut across the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) and music in higher educational ecosystems in South Africa, Germany, the US, and Nigeria. His works in the performance, recording, festivals, documentary, and educational organizations in Africa that include consultations for  Cape Town Opera in South Africa and the Music Society of Nigeria (MUSON) School of Music in Lagos, Nigeria.  Oladele is currently busy with different projects, including a monograph on  Fújì music and the political economy of everyday life in Lagos, the Organ House Concert and Seminar Series, and the Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Africa project. 

• Ayorinde, Oladele. (Forthcoming 2025). “Festival Study as a Framework for Dialogic Social Justice: A Perspective from Johannesburg.” In Festival Activism, eds. McDonald, D., Andrew, S. and Jeremy Reed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Chapter 10. 
•  Ayorinde, Oladele. 2023a. “‘We Had Our Own Jazz Bands’: A Five-Bar Intro to Jazz in Lagos, 1950-1990.” In Jazz and Culture, 6 (1): 27-51. 
•  Ayorinde, Oladele. 2023b. “‘Barrister is Fújì, and Fújì is Barrister’: Fújì Music, Self-making and the Politics of Genre-making in Lagos.” In Ethnomusicology Forum, 32 (2): 1-23. 
•  Ayorinde, Oladele and S. Ajose. 2022. “Music and Spirituality in Africa: Notes on Nigerian gospel music, Spirituality and the Global Economy.” In Religions, 13 (1227): 1-13. 
•  Ayorinde, Oladele. 2020a. “Dizu Plaatjies and the Amampondo: A Case of Music, Agency and Social Transformation.” In SAMUS: South African Music Studies, 40:156-184.  
•  Ayorinde, Oladele. Talabi, O. and A.  Okunade. 2020b. “Documenting and Archiving the Nigerian Musical Arts: Note on Methods, Process, and Practices.” In JANIM: Journal of Association of Nigerian Musicology, 14 (1):78-91.
•  Ayorinde, O. (forthcoming). “Negotiating Change, Preserving Tradition: Music, Performance and the Transformation of Eyo Festival of Lagos, Nigeria”. In Africa. 
• Ayorinde, O. (2018). “‘Unholy Trinity’ and ‘Transformation’ in Post-1994 South Africa: Re-focusing ‘Transformation’ in Higher Education for Social and Economic Empowerment”. In Leeds African Studies Bulletin, 80: 42-59.
• Ayorinde, O. and Sunu Doe, E. (2018). “’African Music’, an Elusive Concept: Rethinking Music Education and Scholarship for Social and Economic Development in Africa”. Pistorius, M (ed.), Conference Proceedings of the South African Society for Research in Music (SASRIM) 2017, 29 – 44. 
• Ayorinde, O. (2017). “Musical Arts Education for Cultural, Social and Economic Development in Africa: Possibilities and Practice”. In Journal of Musical Art Education, 1 (2): 15-29.