Born in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, in 1964, Duncan received his BFA from Louisiana State University and his MFA from Hunter College in New York. He has exhibited extensively throughout the United States, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Flint Institute of Arts, and numerous private collections. Brass Gods follows the national success of Duncan’s acclaimed Battle of the Bands series, which explored the pageantry and cultural significance of Historically Black College and University marching bands. While that body of work examined choreographed spectacle and institutional tradition, Brass Gods shifts toward the improvisational rhythms of New Orleans’ streets, expanding Duncan’s ongoing investigation of music as both cultural inheritance and lived experience.