Charry's work, based in the discipline of ethnomusicology, ranges from the music of West African griots to the globalization of hip hop; from the emergence of an avant garde in jazz in the 1950s and 60s to the music cultures of downtown New York City in the same era. He was the project director for the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute "Ethnomusicology and Global Culture," held at Wesleyan University in 2011.

His books include Mande Music (2000), Hip Hop Africa (editor) (2012), and A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B (2020).