Jacob
Edgar is an Ethnomusicologist, cultural historian and music critic, who for
the past 7 years has been the director of music research and product development
at Putumayo World Music, a respected independent record label that specializes
in compilations of music from around the world. In his role at Putumayo,
Jacob has traveled the globe in search of new artists and music visiting
places like Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, India, France, Portugal,
Turkey, Greece and more. Jacob is the person that helps pick the music for
those excellent Putumayo compilations and he also writes the liner notes.
Jacob moved to Vermont from San Francisco when he was 9 years old, and spent the remainder of his youth in Plainfield, VT. Jacob's father, George Konnoff, who passed away in 2001, was a puppeteer and performing artist who worked regularly with Bread & Puppet Theater, among others. Jacob's mother, Kileh Friedman, is a therapist who lives in Burlington. While in Vermont, Jacob traveled to the former Soviet Union with Project Harmony, worked as a counselor and musician for Circus Smirkus and taught music at the Governor's Institute for the Arts.
While pursuing his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College, where he was a double major in History and Latin American Studies, Mr. Edgar conducted field research on music and society in Central America. His love of music took him to the West Coast where Mr. Edgar was awarded the Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities and graduated from UCLA in 1994 with a Masters in Ethnomusicology. For a time, Mr. Edgar was a professional trumpet player performing primarily salsa and Afro-Cuban music. Prior to his position at Putumayo he was the Label Director for Tinder Records, an independent world music record label. He has written for “The Beat”, “Global Rhythm Magazine”, “The LA Times Book Review” and other publications, and was the host of the radio program “Uncompass” on the San Francisco radio station KALW.
Jacob has lived in Iceland, Costa Rica, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Amsterdam, but has long dreamed of returning to Vermont to settle down with his wife Deirdre and their two daughters, Simone (age 7) and Schuyler (age 3).
While he will continue to consult for Putumayo, Jacob is starting his own independent record label and music publishing company.
[find out more about Jacob's new label,
Cumbancha]