Ioanida Costache is a violinist, videographer, and scholar. She hails from Milwaukie, Oregon, where her parents landed after immigrating from Bucharest, Romania.
Currently, she is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Stanford University. Her research explores issues of race and ethnicity, performance/construction of identity, cultural memory, trauma, and history as they intersect in Romani musico-oral traditions. From Holocaust songs to communist-era popular music, her work demonstrates that music is deeply imbricated in the project of cultural healing.
Her short documentary film, Light Upon (2014) paints a portrait of her violin teacher, Nicu Ciotoi and touches on issues of identity and heritage through musical transmission.