Musicology Colloquium Series
Talk Title:
THE CRUELTY OF JAZZ: TOWARD A HEMISPHERIC POLITICS OF SOUND
Date and Time:
Thursday February 7, 2:00-3:30pm
Location:
Latin American and Iberian Institute (LAII) Conference Room
Talk Description:
Rooted in concepts of affect and Empire, this paper argues that jazz operated in various 20th century Latin American settings as a vital touchstone bearing the risks and benefits of urban modernization, hemispheric geopolitics, and transnational cultural production, “cruelly” echoing the United States’ cultural, political, and economic dominance in the hemisphere and beyond.
Biography:
Jason Borge is an Associate Professor of Latin American Culture at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses on Latin American and Hemispheric popular culture, music, film, and literature. He has published widely on such topics as vernacular music and sound studies, Hollywood in Latin America, popular vanguardism, and the intra-hemispheric dimensions of literature and film. His latest book is Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz (Duke University Press, 2018).
Caption for book cover: Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz (Duke, 2018)
Sponsored by The University of New Mexico Department of Music, The Department of Spanish & Portuguese, and The Latin American and Iberian Institute
Dr. José Luis Hurtado awarded prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship
Composer and pianist José Luis Hurtado, an associate professor in The University of New Mexico’s Department of Music in the College of Fine Arts, is one of the 2020 winners of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.
You Can’t Tell It Like I Can: Black Women, Music, and the Struggle for Social Justice in America
This lecture/performance explores how black women have used music as a method of shaping the public rhetoric and sentiment surrounding the black civil rights struggle in America. Through a historical framework that moves through the height of the abolitionist movement, the Popular front during the 1930s and 1940s, the frontlines of the direct action campaigns of the 1960s, and the proliferation of the Black Power movement in the 1970s.
An Americanish Songbook: Linda Ronstadt’s “other” Country
This talk will consider performances and recordings by singer Linda Ronstadt to propose what I refer to as her Americanish musical songbook. The suffix “ish” here intends to accentuate the “somewhat” or “to some extent” of “American” that Ronstadt—Tucson born and raised—lived and sonically imagined through her extraordinary musical career.