Clay Downham

PhD student in Music Theory

Native Texan Clay Downham is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser working chiefly in the traditions of Black American Music. Before Yale, Clay spent five years working as a full-time freelancer (on guitar, keyboards, bass, hybrid guitar, and vocals) in New Orleans and, briefly, in his hometown of Houston. He has performed funk, R&B, gospel, blues, so-called “jazz,” hip-hop, rock, country, etc. with myriad musicians–some Grammy Award winners or Billboard charting artists–including Nicholas Payton, Germaine Bazel, Yolanda Adams, Rodrick “Bubba” Dowling, Gabrielle Cavassa, Nakitta Foxx, Daniel Winans, Mary Griffin, Vegas Cola, Joshua Redman, Kathleen Moore, Gene Black, Jeremy Joseph, D’Andre Gosey, Faith Becnel, Jay Marcus Hodge, Darion Hodge, Tanya “Sweets,” Eileina Dennis, Khris Royal, and many others. 

Clay’s M.M. thesis, Eric Dolphy’s Out: An Inquiry into George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept, the Music of Eric Dolphy, and Playing Outside, was the first extensive work to engage Dolphy’s archives (550+ pages of far-ranging materials housed at the Library of Congress), as well as explore Russell’s ethical critique of Western music-theoretical hegemony; altogether harkening the “outward bound” tonal explorations that animated the 1960s American avant-garde. The 2018 thesis has since been cited by other scholars engaging Dolphy’s work. Clay remains grateful for his mentors over the years, notably Keith Waters, James Newton, Robert Hatten, Eric Drott, Edward Pearsall, Nicholas Payton, Gene Black, Rodrick “Bubba” Dowling, Joel Gregoire, and Benjamin Teitelbaum. 

M.M. in Music Theory, University of Colorado Boulder, 2018
B.M. in Jazz Performance, University of Texas Austin, 2016
B.A. in Philosophy, University of Texas Austin, summa cum laude, 2016

Clay’s research interests include American vernacular music, improvisation, aural skills pedagogy, oral/aural music theories, multi-instrumentalism, pantonality, philosophy, religion, music/language/glossolalia/xenoglossia, education reform, prison education, law, history of Institutional Psychiatry, and the intersections of music and madness (including both mania conceived as “disease” and the mantic, known as “divine madness”).