Kara Dago-Clark

Kara is the Core Music Director at Westminster Elementary School. She is a clarinet and bass clarinetist who got her B.M. from Boston Conservatory. Kara has over fifteen years of experience as a New York State certified, PreK-12 grade music teacher. She spent most of her years as a core (general) music teacher in The Bronx and Harlem with preK3-5 th graders within the New York City Department of Education. Her love of teaching comes from her love of music-making and her capacity to hold a space of mutual respect for children to express their musicality. During her tenure with the NYCDOE, she served simultaneously in multiple capacities including Citywide Music Teacher Professional Development Facilitator and Arts Education Liaison. She was the founder and director of Music Road, a community school in Harlem offering music to neighbors from the womb to eighty-years old.

As she wanted to continue her artistic growth and nourish desire explore questions that go beyond the classroom, Kara went on to receive her M.A. in Clarinet performance with a Specialization in Ethnomusicology at Hunter College.

She has served on the Advisory Committee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; presented a session on internalized, racialized oppression in educator bodies; was a lead teacher and panel moderator at music educator workshops at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute; and presented her case study on how arts education can aid student well-being by cultivating an expanded scope of agency at Lincoln Center Education’s Summer Forum.

Kara is currently an M.A./PhD Ethnomusicology student at UCLA specializing in African American Studies and conduction research around Mande Immigrant Music in the United States. She is currently learning the balafon from master bala player and jeli (griot) Famoro Dioubate.

These days, Kara’s greatest joy comes from playing her clarinet with her research partners in cross-cultural, contemporary Afro-diasporic music.