Steven Taylor

Appears in: Musicians


Steven Taylor (PhD, Brown University), poet, musician, composer, ethnomusicologist, professor. He is the author of a musical ethnography, "False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk Underground." From 1988 through 1993 he toured the U.S. and Europe with the alternative rock group False Prophets, keeping a detailed journal to document the role of musicians in the international anarchist youth movement. His field notes form the core of the book. 

Taylor has composed music for theatre, film, radio, drama and installations and has toured and recorded with Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Kenward Elmslie, and The Fugs. For Twenty years, he was the principal musical collaborator of Allen Ginsberg. Since 1984 he has been a member of The Fugs, a seminal poetry/rock group. For many years he was Chair of the Department of Writing and Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder Colorado. Currently he is on the faculty of The Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University.