John Charles Shepherd

John Charles Shepherd, born in Surbiton on 25 January 1947, is a British-born music sociologist who spent most of his career in Canada. His work falls within the sociology of popular music, a field in which he examined the social and cultural criteria by which the academic community assesses this repertoire.

His training began with music studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, between 1967 and 1972. He then studied the flute at the Royal College of Music in 1971, and he obtained his doctorate at York University under the supervision of Wilfrid Mellers, in 1977. He taught at universities in Manchester, where he worked at Metropolitan University, and in Peterborough, Ontario, at Trent University. In 1984 he was appointed professor at Carleton University. He also gave lectures abroad, served as Secretary General of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music between 1983 and 1987 and, in 1990, became chair of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World.

His research has examined the effects of popular music in a wide range of community contexts and, more recently, he has devoted himself to the theory of musical cognition and perception. His books include Whose Music? A Sociology of Musical Languages (1977), written with several co-authors, Tin Pan Alley (1982) and Music as Social Text (1991), as well as Music and Cultural Theory (1997), produced together with Peter Wicke.

His legacy lies above all in having applied sociological analysis to the academic evaluation of popular music, an influence reflected in his work editing encyclopaedias and in his reflections on music education.