Clifford R. Murphy

Clifford R. Murphy was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey in 1972, and was raised in seacoast New Hampshire. An avid music fan and a self-taught musician, Cliff pursued a career as a rock musician after graduating from Gettysburg College in 1994. With the independent alternative country rock band Say ZuZu, Cliff toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe, releasing ten full-length albums. Growing discouraged with the realities of the music industry, Say ZuZu disbanded in 2003. Following the band's breakup, Cliff embarked on studies in Ethnomusicology at Brown University, where he received his MA in 2005 and his PhD in 2008. During his studies at Brown, Cliff conducted fieldwork in New England with country musicians, culminating in his first book, "Yankee Twang: Country and Western Music in New England" (2014). During this same time, Cliff began the research that culminated in the biography "Ink: The Indelible J. Mayo Williams" (2024). Since 2008, Cliff has worked as a public folklorist. He was the Director of Maryland Traditions (the state folklife program at the Maryland State Arts Council) from 2008-2015, and was the Director of Folk & Traditional Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2015-2023. Since April of 2023, he has served as Director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage. An active musician and songwriter, Cliff has resumed recording and performing with Say ZuZu - releasing a retrospective ("Here Again") in 2022, and a new full-length album ("No Time To Lose") in 2023 on Strolling Bones Records. Cliff has also authored multiple book chapters on country music, public folklore, and applied ethnomusicology, and is the co-author (with Henry Glassie and Douglas Dowling Peach) of "Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line" (2015). He lives with his family in Baltimore, Maryland.