Steven Feld is a filmmaker, sound artist/performer, and distinguished professor of anthropology emeritus at the University of New Mexico. After studies in music, film, and photography, he received the Ph.D in anthropological linguistics at Indiana University in 1979.

From 1976, he began a research project in the Bosavi rainforest of Papua New Guinea. Results include the monograph Sound and Sentiment, and essays, some published in his co-edited books Music Grooves and Senses of Place. From this work he also produced audio CD projects including Voices of the Rainforest, Rainforest Soundwalks, and Bosavi: Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea. Key theoretical themes developed in this work are the anthropology of sound and voice; acoustemology (acoustic epistemology), sound as a way of knowing.