A series of civil unrest incidents that have been historically chronicled as “riots” on sugar plantations across the British Caribbean colonies, calcified as a sustained movement for labor rights amongst Black workers on various islands in the Caribbean archipelago. This political effort, the West Indies Labor Movement (1934–39) has, like many others like it, been understood as male-dominated political action. Taking up the notion of noise as disruption, this talk describes how the most prominent term for, and vehicle of, protest during the post-emancipation era, the riot, was not always a description of acts of male-led physical violence. Instead, especially on smaller islands like St. Kitts, this term has been deployed as part of a larger commentary on the prominent role of loud, singing, playing, dancing, and verbally protesting women who were integral to sustained political resistance. Drawing on recent research that disturbs the primacy of material artefacts over the oral histories of women, this talk highlights the importance of “making noise” within the colloquial narratives of Caribbean women whose legacies of activism and agitation have been silenced by the abundant and noisy archives of papers, legers, receipts, and memos that selectively chronicle the business and activities of men.

 Saariaho and Sellars’s Only the Sound Remains (2016): 

Transcoding the aesthetics of Noh drama

Only the Sound Remains (2016) is the third opera produced in collaboration between Peter Sellars and Kaija Saariaho. Sellars famously described Noh drama as a theatre in which “everything is slowed down to a pace where we can feel what is going on at each moment” and shares his thoughts behind linking two otherwise separate plays in the making of this opera as follows. Tsunemasa (Always Strong) is about night, a favorite of the Emperor who played the lute, who killed someone in war and then was killed. He is a restless spirit, who appears during a service conducted by the monk Gyōkei, then disappears into the night in flame. Hagoromo (the Feather Mantle) is about a fisherman at dawn, who sees a cloak hanging from a pine. He agrees to return it to the Tennin (celestial maiden) if she performs the sacred dance of heaven. Considering the opera as a transcultural adaptation of Noh drama, this presentation explores three main questions. How does Sellars reimagine the illusory world of Noh drama into a contemporary opera and infuse it with familiar archetypes from western mythology? How does Saariaho’s music salvage characteristics central to the music of Noh drama and transcode them into her own musico-dramatic aesthetics? Finally, given David Levin’s claim that contemporary opera is “a site where the operatic text competes with the performance text” (2007: xviii), how does one account for “the tension between sight and sound” (McClary 2019: 136) that lies  at the heart of this collaboration?

This lecture is an opportunity to share some of my compositions with many of you who have not had a chance to hear my works performed.

Over the course of my 39 years on the School of Music faculty, my compositional style and approach have changed from serialism to alternate modalities using quartal/quintal harmonic structures and use of pentatonic and hexatonic scales.  During the last 10-12 years I have been exploring melodic and harmonic possibilities of the octatonic scale as a source of pitch organization.

My presentation will be primarily experiential (listening) and conversational.  Theoretical aspects will be discussed as they relate to representative compositions.  Selected works to be discussed and heard include sonatas for each of the following: violin, cello and clarinet.  My presentation will conclude with the second and third movements of Ala Barocca—a work dedicated to the basso continuo (here: bassoon and piano) to have the opportunity to escape “beast of burden” status and to function as “soloists” instead! This work is a Baroque concerto, but in a style seen through the lens of the octatonic scale.

From Jah Rastafari to Ras Tafari: The Glocalization of Reggae Music in Ethiopia through Negotiations of Proximity

Reggae music was created in Jamaica in the 1960s and subsequently became popular worldwide. While various studies examine the globalization of reggae music, my research focusses on the glocalization of reggae in Ethiopia—the Rastafarian Promised Land. I build on the work of Timothy Rommen and Marvin Sterling who investigate the ways reggae is linked to Rastafari ideology in its globalization and glocalization. In this presentation, drawing on ethnographic research and music analysis, I examine how the processes of globalization in Ethiopia intersect with Ethiopian nationalism and Rastafari migration to Ethiopia. More specifically, I investigate the extent to which Ethiopian reggae singers position themselves in relation to the Rastafari movement in order to be perceived as authentic reggae artists while maintaining their Ethiopian identities. This process of negotiating proximity impacts how Ethiopians localize reggae music and reveals the tensions, and potential compatibilities, between Ethiopians and Rastafarians.

The Sounds of Desire, Seduction, and Nostalgia: Musicalizing Femininity in cine mexicano (1931–1952)

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Mexican film industry produced genres that depicted crucial characteristics that shaped mexicanidad (the cultural identity of the Mexican people) and highlighted on-screen musical performances, particularly by male characters. Although national cinema focused predominantly on the representation of Mexican masculinity and machismo (evident in the singing charro), the visual and aural representations of femininity and womanhood were explored in two significant genres: the prostitute melodrama and the cine de añoranza porfiriana (films of Porfirian longing). Women characters in these films (such as the prostitute and the debutante) mirrored contemporary societal beliefs and followed narratives in which their social behaviors were scrutinized and criticized as they attempt to move outside of the status quo. Diegetic musical performances were intertwined in these narratives, exposing the societal contradictions of contemporary Mexican culture, particularly the precarious position of women.

Voicing the Opposition: Lila Downs, El Demagogo, and Balas y Chocolate

In her 2015 CD Balas y Chocolate (Bullets and Chocolate), Mixtec–American singer-songwriter Lila Downs (b.1969)—perhaps best known to U.S. audiences for her cameo in the film Frida (2002)—weaves themes of the Day of the Dead ceremony across varied songs in vernacular and transnational styles to create a coherent, vigorous, extended musico-poetic critique of greed, corruption, violence, and environmental degradation. In doing so, she conjures the figure of the “new mestiza,” described by Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2002) as a woman of mixed cultures, languages, and identities, with “a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer, a consciousness of the Borderlands” (Borderlands/La Frontera, 1987).

This paper considers three songs from the CD, including the title song, “Humito de copal” (copal smoke), and “La patria madrina” (Motherland), as well as Downs’s more recent “El Demagogo” (The demagogue), which she sang at the U.S. Mexico border (2016).