Formerly the director of York University's Graduate Program in Ethnomusicology and Musicology in Toronto, he has written many liner notes, studies and books on popular music.
[3] In 1979 Bowman began teaching part-time at York University in Toronto, where he introduced the study of popular music.
[2] Bowman studied the history of the Stax Records label and its artists; he created liner notes for boxed sets of The Complete Stax/Volt Soul Singles.
[5] Bowman won the 1996 Best Album Notes Grammy for his 47,000-word monograph accompanying the 10-CD boxed set of The Complete Stax/Volt Soul Singles, Vol.
[7] In the 2000s and 2010s Bowman created the programs for each year's Rock‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, after interviewing the inductees.