Benjamin Barson is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His book, Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons, delves into jazz’s roots in the counter-plantation legacies of the Haitian Revolution and Radical Reconstruction. With a PhD in Music from the University of Pittsburgh, Barson has completed fellowships at Cornell University and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. His scholarship spans topics from the musical cultures of Chinese indenture in the U.S. South to the Black Arts Movement's impact on Fred Ho’s work. Barson, a recipient of the 2018 Johnny Mandel Prize from the ASCAP Foundation, merges his musical practice with activism, drawing inspiration from revolutionary jazz traditions. His composition, Mirror Butterfly: The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite (2018), has been praised as both a “magnificently realized” piece and “a call to action.”