Dear all,
You are warmly invited to the next colloquium at the Faculty of Music, Cambridge University, on Wednesday 4 May at 17:00 (UK time).
Prof. Mary Caton Lingold (Virginia Commonwealth University) will share a paper titled “Sonic Artifacts, African Music, and the Atlantic World” (abstract below) followed by Q&A.
Colloquia take place in the Recital Room of West Road Concert Hall of Cambridge University and online. Please email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> for the Zoom link.
Best wishes,
2021–22 Colloquium Committee
Alexandra Leonzini, Tadhg Sauvey, Nicky Swett
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ABSTRACT
Atlantic African sound systems followed in the footsteps of captives, kings, and free people, wherever they sailed and trod and wherever tales of their experiences were told. When Africans came to the West Indies under captivity, they brought their ways of life with them. And though they were displaced from kin and country, enslaved people took great care, at great cost, to revive their most precious and pleasurable traditions in a new land. Their efforts ultimately transformed musical practice on a global scale. Enslaved performers planted musical seeds that grew into countless genres, many of which have become part of the soundtrack to modern life.
This talk draws from a book-in-progress, “Sound Legacy: Music and Slavery in an African Atlantic World,” in which I explain how captive Africans established musical traditions while facing the immense difficulties of enslavement. The book’s scope—both in terms of geography and temporality—parallels the rise of plantation agriculture and transatlantic trade, spanning roughly from the early 1600s through the end of the eighteenth century. During this time period, increasing maritime travel facilitated economic exchange between Africans, Americans, and Europeans. Goods, people, and their cultural practices—like music—followed this triangular route, bringing distant geographies into intimate relation.
This talk will explore some of the challenges inherent to the study of the vernacular musical traditions of early modern Atlantic Africans, and how I use methods in sound studies to interpret mediated portrayals of African performances from European-authored travelogues. I will also introduce a few exemplary sources and musical excerpts that help to illuminate rich music histories on the Atlantic coasts of Africa and in the Caribbean.
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