Date of event: Thursday November 14, 2019
Time and Location: 2:00-3:30pm, LAII Conference Room
Description: In New Spain, an institutional structure of merit and promotion hinged on the idea of reason as an intrinsically European attribute. This attribute differentiated ‘Europeans’ from people of mixed race claiming European status based on their skin complexion. Given the affective impulses permeating ideas about reason in New Spain, this paper considers reason in light of musico-phenomenological strategies that racialized subjects used to re-write their bodies. Such process problematizes the philosophical purview of the Enlightenment’s civilizing mission, and the historical narrative of its political project.
Biography: The work of Professor Jesús Ramos-Kittrell analyzes the relationship of cultural phenomena to the socio-political structures that organize and co-produce them. Such processes interrogate power asymmetries affecting issues of social, political, and cultural representation. His published work covers the early modern period in the Americas and more current cultural analyses of globalization. Previously, Dr. Ramos-Kittrell has served as joint faculty of musicology, ethnomusicology and Latin American Studies, at Tulane University and Southern Methodist University. He is currently assistant professor in residence of musicology at the University of Connecticut.
Sponsors: The University of New Mexico Department of Music and The Latin American and Iberian Institute
Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez: Imagining Something Better: Punk, Tejano, La Bamba, and Other Rolas from My Border Hi-Fi
Unrepentant border crosser, writer, ex-dj, and academic. Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is an Associate Professor of US Southwestern Literatures, and Creative Writing in the Department of Spanish, and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico.
Music from the Americas presents “Scaling the Wall”
“Scaling the Wall” is a project that promotes works for flute by Canadian, American and Mexican ex-patriate composers. It seeks to showcase how contemporary composers connected to those countries have successfully bridged the political, cultural and geographic borders crossing the western 100th meridian. Featured composers’ works vary in style, instrumentation and compositional approach, but also illustrate the universality of music, regardless of nationality.
Music from the Americas presents Iracema de Andrade, cello
Brazilian cellist Iracema de Andrade is strongly committed to the music of our time. Her repertory includes pieces for solo cello, cello and electronics, as well as multimedia and improvisation.