Austin T. Richey is a musician, multimedia artist, and Storyteller for Detroit Opera. He recently defended his PhD in Musicology at Eastman School of Music; his dissertation, “Synergistic Mythologies: Improvising the Afrofuture in Detroit's North End” explores the resonances between diasporic African musical, dance, and visual arts and Detroit-specific genres such as Motown and techno.

Richey’s current sonic practice reclaims public spaces through community-oriented DIY synthesizer-making workshops and site-specific, historically and environmentally informed sound installation. Through these workshops, Richey connects young sound makers to their environment via deep listening practices while teaching skills like electrical engineering, encouraging them to experiment with self-designed sonic expressions.

Richey has published original research in African Music, Sonic Signatures, Opioid Aesthetics: Expressive Culture in an Age of Addiction, has contributed research to the Public Broadcasting Service digital series Sound Field and has a forthcoming essay in the Routledge Handbook of Music in the New African Diaspora.

His work is supported by the Frederick Douglass Institute, the Society for American Music, Humanities New York, the Knight Foundation, and the Presser Foundation.