Steven Loza is one of few grand pioneers in music, philosophy and religion! This magisterial text is his magnum opus - a rich multidimensional and cross-cultural inquiry into the musical creativity of suffering humanity across the globe! What a great gift to us all.

Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary

An Ethnomusicologist’s Last Lecture is an illuminating, provocative, and at once inspiring and perpetually challenging work. It is also an intensely personal book, one in which Steven Loza pulls no punches in articulating his views, beliefs, identity (or identities), and professional history. As such, it can and should be read as a personal testimonial of a senior, influential, and distinguished scholar in the field who has reached a point in life and career where there is no sense of need, let alone desire, to hold back from expressing their views on a great range of matters with candor, conviction, and frankness. In this mode of presentation, many gems of wisdom are shared amidst (and often in tandem with) bold pronouncements of faith, hope, cynicism, disenchantment, and rebuke.

Michael Bakan, Florida State University

Anyone looking for scholarship on music and religion that is animated by rich and diverse ethnomusicological experience, strong existential concerns, and a distinctive, creative voice will find much sustenance and inspiration in Steven Loza’s An Ethnomusicologist’s Last Lecture.

Mark W. Roche, author of Beautiful Ugliness: Christianity, Modernity, and the Arts