Capital Conversations: Kyra Gaunt

By Patrick Coote | May 5, 2025

Dr. Kyra Gaunt.

Photo Credit: TED

"She was very brazen, outspoken. She didn't care what anybody thought about how she twerked. But every time she left the class, the guys in the class treated her like she was a slut," said Dr. Kyra Gaunt, recalling a student in one of the first ethnomusicology classes she taught at the University at Albany.   

The mistreatment of the student by her classmates struck a chord with Gaunt as an ethnomusicologist. She’s seen how the culture treats women who are considered unapologetically sexual.   

Gaunt was already an esteemed ethnomusicologist specializing in Black music when she joined the UAlbany faculty in 2017.   

“My favorite genre is Black music," Gaunt said, adding that she loves all music. "I don't care if it's classical—I don't care if it's Afropunk--I don't care if it's new or old school rap.”   

Gaunt has adored music for as long as she can remember. Music stars such as Chaka Khan and Minnie Ripperton inspired her to pursue singing.   

After graduating high school, Gaunt decided to get her doctorate in voice at the University of Michigan. There was an age-old fear that followed her throughout her studies that would stop her pursuit of her passion, though, and that was stage fright.   

“I was doing my doctorate in voice at the University of Michigan. I had horrible stage fright,  I'd say for about 20 years, and I just never conquered it,” Gaunt said. “I was about to finish all my coursework in my doctorate in voice, and faculty said, ‘I don't think you're going to finish.’ That rattled me.”  

Soon after Gaunt’s encounter with faculty, she took an ethnomusicology class and fell in love with the subject.   

“I fell in love with it the first time I took the course,” Gaunt said. “I was like, ‘yeah, this is how I think about music, as culture.’” 

That class and her reservations because of stage fright prompted her to switch her studies to ethnomusicology.  

Despite her long-standing difficulty with stage fright, she persevered with singing as more of a side project rather than her main source of income.  She has done a multitude of projects that require being on center stage, including her album, “Be The True Revolution,” her one-woman show she performed twice on the UAlbany campus, and performances in places such as the Smalls Jazz Club in Manhattan.   

Gaunt gave a TED Talk at the University of Michigan in 2015 about Black girls, their connection to music, and how she reclaimed her voice in the music industry.  

“I sang on the very stage I used to audition on, and I got choked up,” she said. “The audience gave me a big applause and then I gave my TED Talk," Gaunt said in a recent interview.”

One of the projects Gaunt has in the works is a book that explores how hip-hop music orchestrates violence against Black girls on YouTube.  

She recounts that the most challenging part of the writing process is grappling with how horribly women and girls are treated for things that in other places are not controversial.   

 “The most difficult part has been that it's a book about linguistic, cultural, and systemic violence against Black girls for something that is culturally appropriate throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and more,” Gaunt said.  “I was just writing one of the chapters about how Black girls who twerk are treated with such disdain, even among people who find themselves in religious communities."  

Gaunt’s ideals bleed into the classrooms she teaches as well, recalling a time in which a student of hers had the courage to admit that she enjoyed twerking, and the judgment that followed.  

In one of the earliest installments of Gaunt’s Music, Power, and Digital Tech class, this student was mistreated by classmates for her self-expression.   

“I was like, wow, just by being adjacent to us and the things we like to do you might get esteem online, but in real life you get treated like a slut,” Gaunt said. “You're going to get treated how hip hop has trained you to treat Black girls, even though you don't have Black skin.”