About

Kim Kattari earned her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology and a doctoral certificate in Cultural Studies from The University of Texas at Austin in 2011. She also holds a Master of Music from UT Austin and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Ethnic Studies from The University of California, Berkeley. Her primary research interest is subcultural studies, focusing on how people's lifestyles and interests, particularly non-normative ones, reflect and influence their personal experiences and identities. Her book, “Psychobilly: Subcultural Survival” (Temple, 2020), explores a musical subculture called psychobilly, which combines punk and rockabilly elements with horror and 1950s B-movie themes. The book examines why fans strongly identify with this rebellious subculture, how they enact resistance through their performance of anti-mainstream identities and values, and how participation in the psychobilly community impacts their lives. Her recent research investigates the transformative impact of electronic music experiences, documenting how electronic music shapes or changes individuals' perspectives and lifestyles. Kattari has taught a variety of undergraduate courses on performance history, appreciation, and analysis, including topics such as the evolution of American musical theater, history of rock, music and human experience, and world cultures of music. She has also taught graduate seminars on altered states and performance, vernacular culture, Latinx expressive culture, and Caribbean cultural performance. As a performer, she plays piano, keyboards, guitar, steelpan, and button accordion, and has performed in ensembles spanning conjunto, gamelan, Afro-Pop, Latin American, and steelpan music. She serves as the faculty advisor and instructor for Maroon Steel, Texas A&M’s steelpan ensemble.

Research topics

• Art
• Aesthetics
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Visual arts
• Literature
• Anthropology
• Psychology
• Media studies
• Law
• History
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Active/activist listening, 10th annual <i>Drone Not Drones</i> . Minneapolis, the Cedar Cultural Center, January 24–25, 2025

  Sound Studies · 2025-07-03

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• Imagining an Undead Carnival: Psychobilly Fantasies of an Idealistic Afterlife

  2023-06-13

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• Imagining an Undead Carnival:

  2023

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  • Computer Science
  • Art
  • Visual arts
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• 10. Imagining an Undead Carnival: Psychobilly Fantasies of an Idealistic Afterlife

  Boydell and Brewer eBooks · 2023

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  • Art
  • Literature
  • Aesthetics
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• Surviving through subculture: Finding undeath in psychobilly

  Punk & Post Punk · 2020 · 1 citations

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  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Aesthetics

  While some scholars suggest that subcultures are a thing of the past, that we are living in a post-subcultural era, an ethnographic exploration of psychobilly shows that subcultures still play a meaningful role in contemporary society. Since its development in the early 1980s, psychobilly has uniquely blended punk, rockabilly and horror to express countercultural values and aesthetics. Like the groups studied by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1960s and 1970s, the psychobilly subculture is characterized by consistent and distinct values and tastes, a shared sense of collective identity, committed involvement over a long period of time, and relative independence from the culture industry. By participating in this obscure but strongly defined subculture, psychobillies not only express their resistance to mainstream culture but also find strategies to manage and improve their lived experience. As a result of their committed subcultural involvement, psychobillies feel alive, or, rather, ‘undead’, a metaphor made all the more symbolic because of the subculture’s interest in a host of undead creatures. This article thus argues for continued application of subcultural theory to understand the significant meaning and impact of participation in non-conformist communities today.

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• Viva La Razabilly

  Journal of Popular Music Studies · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

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  The contemporary rockabilly subculture is often thought to primarily reflect, embody, and celebrate the white Southern American culture that gave rise to the music and fashion in the 1950s. Accordingly, some have suggested that the active participation of Latinxs seems perplexing. This article draws on ten years of ethnographic research to explore why Latinxs do not view their enthusiasm for Southern-born rockabilly music and culture as an incongruity. This essay first considers why rockabilly resonates with Latinx participants, underscoring and documenting its relevance across several generations, then examines how Latinxs have uniquely engaged with and customized the subculture in ways that reflect their bicultural heritage and experiences. This work draws ethnomusicological attention to the reasons Latinxs have identified with rockabilly culture and the ways they have contributed to it, contesting assumptions of the characteristic “whiteness” of this subculture. The documentation, acceptance, and acknowledgment of Latinx involvement in rockabilly is not without political significance, particularly given the subculture's historical incorporation of Confederate imagery. The growth, strength, and recognition of Latinx rockabilly represent a meaningful rewriting of the genre's racial politics, highlighting the historical involvement of non-Anglos in the scene and encouraging diverse participation today.

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• Introduction: Reflections on the Past, Present and Future of Popular Music Scholarship

  Journal of World Popular Music · 2019-12-24 · 2 citations

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  In 2018, the Popular Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology organized a roundtable that explored the development of popular music scholarship, not only within ethnomusicology but also in relation to the larger field of popular music studies. This special section, which includes transcriptions of each of the panelists’ spoken remarks, highlights reflections from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (including folklore and ethnomusicology, anthropology, American studies and history, and popular culture studies) and experiences (both within academia and in the public sector). The roundtable participants recognize the value and impact of scholarship on popular music and culture, for it contributes to our understanding of the powerful and meaningful ways in which people engage aesthetically with the world around them. By reflecting on the past and present context of popular music scholarship, the panelists offer suggestions for the future growth of the field, underscoring its role in challenging elitist and ethnocentric biases, contesting the institutional marginalization and dismissal of popular culture, fostering interdisciplinary conversations, and engaging in activist scholarship that exposes, critiques and helps to change structural inequities.

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• Reggaeton

  Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World · 2014-01-01

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  Reggaeton (also spelled reggaetón or reguetón) is a commercially successful genre of music that developed in Puerto Rico during the 1990s and became increasingly popular on an international level throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Most obviously influenced by reggae and

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• Identifying with the Rebel of the Past

  Volume ! · 2014-01-01 · 3 citations

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  This article explores the ways in which the subcultural community of rockabilly revivalists use music as a vehicle for expressing their nostalgia for a specific moment in the 1950s, when rockabilly reflected a countercultural rebellion. As most of the participants feel marginalized and alienated from mainstream culture, they perform their identification with the rockabilly rebel of the 1950s, and demonstrate their refusal of modern culture through their attentiveness to the music, cars, and fashion of the past. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article explores the contradictory tendencies of nostalgic subcultures which can be simultaneously regressive and progressive, reactionary and rebellious, as subversive values of the past can help improve present and future experiences.

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• Psychobilly : imagining and realizing a "culture of survival" through mutant rockabilly

  Texas ScholarWorks (Texas Digital Library) · 2011-05-01 · 2 citations

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