Biography
Education
- Ph D in Musicology, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
- MA in Musicology, City of University of New York - Brooklyn College
- MA in Music Technology, New York University - Steinhardt School of Education
Mike Levine is an assistant professor of musicology at Christopher Newport University. His research utilizes ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Havana, Miami, and through digital platforms to investigate “el paquete semanal” (a popular USB-based internet platform in Cuba) and its relationship to improvised modes of informal music sharing and Cuban reparto music. He has written for "Sounding Out!", Hypermedia, Cuban Studies, Twentieth Century Music, and the volume Independence in 21st-Century Popular Music. He is currently drafting a monograph, Pegao: Underground Music and the Rise of Reparto in Post-Socialist Cuba, for University Press of Florida.
Teaching
Cuban Music / Internet Music / Popular Music / Caribbean and Latin American Popular Musics
Research
Cuban Music / Internet Studies / Popular Music
Selected Accomplishments
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Book, Scholarly-New
Co-editor, Reggaetón after 2010. -
Book, Scholarly-New
Sounding Things: Props, Material Culture, and Accessories in Popular Music. -
Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
Reparto’s Sonic Gestures: Sonic Poetics and the Post-Socialist Auditory in Afro-Cuban Havana. Routledge. -
Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
"Tengo Money": El Paquete, Planet Records, and the Split Infrastructures of Cuban Popular Music. Oxford Handbook of Global Music Industry. -
Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
"Walking the Length of the Island": Improvised Internet and Cuba’s First Independent Music Industry. Oxford University. -
Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
(2025). Sneaking Across the Digital Divide: USB Sticks and the Infrastructure of Independent Cuban Music. Bloomsbury. -
Journal Article, Academic Journal
“I Have What I Had to Have”: Signifying Blackness in Three Musical Settings of Nicolás Guillén’s “Tengo”. American Music. Pages, 32. -
Book, Scholarly-New
Pegao: Underground Music and the Rise of Reparto in Post-Socialist Cuba. University Press of Florida. -
Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
Everyone’s going to the Rumba: Trap Latino and the Cuban Internet. NYU Press.
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Music Composition - Major Work, Publication
""Gone Girl" (Ghost Guns)". Used in the film "Veronica and Julian". New York, New York. -
Music Performance - Participation
"Music and Neuroscience: An Exploration of Sound and the Brain". Empire State University and Christopher Newport University. Scholes Street Studio. Brooklyn, NY.
- Michael Levine, The Caribbean Intensities in Music and Sound Symposium, June 12, 2026., "¡Dan Asco! Disgust, Desire, and Sonic Intensity in Cuban Reparto," Chicago, Illinois. (2026)
- Michael Levine, Moving Media in the Americas Conference, "Technological Disobedience in Offline Cuba: Packaging and Sharing Music Through El Paquete Semanal," Tulane University. (2025)
- Michael Levine, Seminar in Cuban and Cuban Diaspora Studies, ""Walking the Length of the Island": Improvised Infrastructure and the Birth of the Reparto Music Industry (2012-2016)," Virtual. (2025)
- Michael Levine, Music and Online Cultures in a Changing Platform Ecosystem International Conference, FCSH, NOVA University Lisbon, "Technological Disobedience in Offline Cuba: Packaging and Sharing Music Through El Paquete Semanal," NOVA University Lisbon. (2025)
- Michael Levine, The 14th Conference on Cuban and Cuban American Studies, "“A Festival of Decadence in a Decadent Country”: Sounding and Contesting Community in Miami’s Cuban Diaspora," Miami, Florida. (2024)