About Frank Gunderson

Gunderson formerly served as the music director for KAOS radio in Olympia, Washington, and collaborated with the renowned northwest outsider musician Travis Roberts. Roberts and Gunderson are cousins who worked on a project that resulted in multiple prominent independent records and a Bret Woods-helmed award-winning film. Human Skab was released in 2012 by SnagFilms.

This was his first attempt to document the history of music through video. Alexander Street distributed his most recent picture, Ng'oma: The Work of Our Clan, in the year 2020. The video follows a master drum maker in the Sukuma area of western Tanzania and has been screened at dozens of international film festivals.

Gunderson's most recent book, Beloved Youth of Many Days: Stories about Milmani Park Orchestra, is set in Tanzania and tells the story of a well-known rhumba band in Dar Es Salaam.

Gunderson completed his Bachelor of Arts at Evergreen State College in Washington and his Master of Arts in World Music at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He pursued his studies at the institution to get a doctorate in ethnomusicology.

His earliest academic posts were at Ohio University and the University of Michigan. In addition, he spent two years teaching in a small Harambee high school in Kenya.