Asha Sydney Burtin is a singer-songwriter and oral historian who grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music production at Rider University in New Jersey, with a double minor in African American studies as well as gender and sexuality studies. During her time in undergrad she took advantage of opportunities to shed light on the plight of Black American people, specifically Black women, such as being a recurring panelist at her university’s events surrounding gender, culture, sexuality and race.

She is interested in finding the ways that music and oral traditions connect in order to build and strengthen community. As a Black American and a creative, she is continuously interested in amplifying marginalized voices in order to shed light on stories and perspectives that she believes deserve to be heard and shared.

Her recent thesis, titled Black DJ Renaissance: An Oral History of Black Women DJs; DJing as Storytelling and Art Practice is an ongoing project that aims to explore and preserve the history of Black womens' presence in DJ and dance music history.

Carter S. King | La’yahawise (he/him) is a performance scholar interested in the intersections of material culture and performance studies, which has largely been informed by his practice as a costume designer and as an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation. Carter is particularly interested in how a decolonial performance studies can engage with oral history methodologies to explore the performativity of makers and artists, as well as bring to light the performativity of objects and other facets of material culture.

Carter’s work as a costume designer has primarily focused on historic indigenous—specifically Oneida—dress and costume can function in live performance, exhibit spaces, and as speaking their own histories. Within his professional experience as a costume designer, he has designed for two celebrations of the Oneida Nation’s Bicentennial, the Oneida Treaty Signing (2022) and Oneida Bicentennial (2023), alongside historic costume consultations for exhibitions and television. Concluding his B.A. in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at Yale University, Carter wrote his thesis on historic Oneida dress.

Carter’s background in costume design, art-making, and performance studies has brought and fueled his interest in oral history, storytelling, and the importance of indigenous oration in the development of indigenous performance studies. His interest in how indigenous artist’s voices coincide with the power of their artwork pushed his work with Oneida community members and elders to share their expertise to develop a dialogic, oral relationship to his scholarship and analysis of object performance.

With this in mind, it’s Carter’s hope to continue this exploration of oral history as an aspect of indigenous performance and a critical methodology pertaining to material cultures while at OHMA.