Heterophony: Texture, Technique, and Social Commentary
March 7, 2019
2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Keller Hall, Center for the Arts
Talk Description: This lecture is in two parts: the first draws from my research on the 1960s jazz avant-garde and musicians’ interests in heterophonic musical textures. I show how heterophony, technique and texture, satisfied a joint aesthetic and social/political goal for musicians and audiences. The parallels between textural and ethnic/racial difference in improvisatory experimentalism, are where aesthetics and social relations become intertwined.
For the second part, I perform original music that utilizes heterophony and “noise” in a solo electronic and improvised format. This performance segment is my own creative response to the historical precedents that I outline in the previous segment.
Biography: Kwami Coleman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of musicology at the Gallatin School on individualized Study at New York University. His work is focused on improvised music, aesthetics, historiography, identity, and political economy. Kwami is also a pianist and composer, and released a recording called Local Music in 2017 of original music for trio plus field recordings captured in his home neighborhood, Harlem. His current book project is titled Change: The “New Thing” and Modern Jazz.
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.
Arab Musicking on the U.S.–Mexico Border
This talk explores the relationship between trauma and identity by examining Arab music performance on the U.S.–Mexico border. Drawing on the musicking of Syrian and Mexican migrant communities, I interrogate theories of cultural and psychological trauma and borderland epistemologies to explore how border tensions influence the often-fraught views of identity.
Music from the Americas presents The Low Frequency Trio
Formed by Antonio Rosales (bass clarinet), Juan José García (doublebass), and José Luis Hurtado (piano), LOW FREQUENCY TRIO is one of the few ensembles in the world that plays music that was exclusively composed for them.