The Dent Medal, struck in memory of the distinguished scholar and musician Edward J. Dent (1876-1957), has been awarded by the Royal Musical Association annually since 1961 to recipients selected for their outstanding contribution to musicology.
A list of candidates is drawn up by the Council of the Association and the Directorium of the International Musicological Society.
The Dent Medal for 2017 is awarded to Alejandro L. Madrid.
Alejandro L. Madrid is Professor of Musicology at Cornell University. Madrid is a musicologist of extraordinary intellectual range and breadth; throughout his career so far he has shown deep engagement with transnational and revisionist historical argument across an astonishingly wide range of musical practice. He has published in two languages throughout his career and the sheer range of his international prizes bears witness to the distinction of his scholarship in popular music studies, Latin American studies, and international musicology alike.
He is the author, co-author and editor of eight books since 2008; his last monograph on the Mexican microtonalist Julián Carrilo, In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), won the 2016 Robert M. Stevenson Award (AMS) and the 2016 Humanities Book Award (Latin American Studies Association); his 2009 monograph, Sounds of the Modern Nation. Music, Culture and Ideas in Post- Revolutionary Mexico (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009) was a cultural and analytical study of avant-garde and modernist music scenes and ideas in 1920s Mexico and, in its Spanish version, was awarded the 2005 Casa de las Américas International Musicology Prize.
His first English-language monograph, Nor-Tec Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), was a study of the role of globalization, new technologies, and performance in the development of electronic dance music scenes within the contested cultural area of the U.S.-Mexico border, and was awarded the 2009 Woody Guthrie Book Award (International Association for the Study of Popular Music [IASPM]-US). His 2011 edited collection Transnational Encounters. Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) won the 2012 Ruth A. Solie Award, AMS).