She has held fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Conceived by black British filmmaker Steve McQueen, “Soundtrack of America” was developed with the input of a creative team that included African American composer and producer Quincy Jones and featured 25 emerging artists. Mahon was the Chief Academic Advisor to “Soundtrack of America,” a five-night concert series celebrating the impact of African American music on contemporary culture that was one of the inaugural commissions for the April 2019 opening of The Shed.

Currently, she is a member of the SEM Council and the AMS Council.

She was chair of the Popular Music section of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) from November 2016 to November 2020 and has served on the American Musicological Society’s (AMS) Committee on Race and Ethnicity. Her articles on African-American cultural studies have appeared in academic venues such as American Ethnologist, Journal of Popular Music Studies Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture Ethnomusicology Journal of the American Musicological Society and Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society and online at and on the websites of National Public Radio and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Her first book, Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race (Duke University Press, 2004), is an ethnographic study that examines the ways African American rock musicians used music and activism to challenge the limitations placed on black music and black identity in the 1980s and 1990s. She is the author of Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll (Duke University Press, 2020), an exploration of the pivotal part African American women have played in the development of rock and roll. She teaches courses on the history of rock and roll, music and the construction of race, fieldwork methods, and African American women and music. Maureen Mahon is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests include African American music and culture the construction and performance of race and gender in music and the relationship between race, class, generation, and culture.

Maureen mahon black diamond queens