Charles Hiroshi Garrett is Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he teaches courses in classical music, jazz, and popular music. His book, Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century, received the Irving Lowens Memorial Book Award from the Society for American Music. He also served as editor-in-chief for an award-winning reference work, The Grove Dictionary of American Music, second edition.

What is musical humor? How can a sound be funny? What makes the combination of music and humor distinctive and appealing? Drawing on comic examples across the history of American music, this presentation examines the rich relationship between music and humor, first by delving into how composers and musicians produce humor through purely musical means and then by exploring how music generates special comic effects in combination with lyrics, staging, performance, film, and new forms of media.

This is the last in a six-lecture series. The subject is Humor, Comedy, and Laughter in Everyday Life and Beyond. The next lecture series will start April 4, 2019. The subject is: Changing Gender Roles.