Speaker Series
Afrological Perspectives on Timbre and Orchestration
Afrological Perspectives on Timbre and Orchestration
Hosted by the Timbre in Afrological Music Workgroup, the purpose of the series is to expand the ways we think about timbre and orchestration, diversify the music cultures ACTOR engages with, and to center the voices who know these traditions best.
The series features a diverse mix of ethnomusicologists, theorists, performers, musicologists, and composers from both within the African continent and throughout the African diaspora. Their areas of expertise reflect the variety of Black musical practice; speakers will present on traditional Zambian ceremony, be-bop in the Civil Rights era, crunk and trap hip-hop, African American marching bands, neo-traditional African music, and Afro-Caribbean jazz. Speakers will reflect on themes such as the gendering of timbre, critical race and timbre descriptors, embodied experience, sonic representation, and pan-diasporic orchestral aesthetics.
All talks will occur over Zoom, are free and open to the public, and do not require registration.
Signup to the email list for this series here (external link).
Speakers | 2023-24 Season
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Leyla McCalla
Combining original compositions and traditional Haitian tunes with historical broadcasts and contemporary interviews, Leyla McCalla’s remarkable new album, Breaking The Thermometer, offers an immersive sonic journey through 50 years of racial, social, and political unrest as it explores the legacy of Radio Haiti—the first radio station to report in Haitian Kreyòl, the voice of the people—and the journalists who risked their lives to broadcast it.
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Prof. Braxton D. Shelley
Minister, musician, and musicologist, Braxton D. Shelley is a tenured associate professor of music, of sacred music, and of divinity in the Department of Music, the Institute of Sacred Music, and Yale’s Divinity School. A musicologist who specializes in African American popular music, his research and critical interests, while especially focused on African American gospel performance, extend into media studies, sound studies, phenomenology, homiletics, and theology.
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Ayò Olúrántí
Ayò Olúrántí is a composer, conductor, organist, and music theorist specializing in pre-colonial Yorùbá music and culture. Equally fluent in the fields of production and computer technology, he is also an active member of the digital and virtual pipe organ community. His cross-cultural approaches to composition and scholarship have earned him considerable international attention. He has performed and composed in Nigeria, the UK, the USA, South Africa, and Germany.
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Prof. Matthew D. Morrison
Matthew D. Morrison is an Assistant Professor in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His research focuses on the relationship between (racial) identity, performance, property, copyright law, and inequities within the history of American popular music and beyond.
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Speakers | 2022-23 Season
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Dr. Bibian Kalinde
Dr. Bibian Kalinde is Zambia’s first female doctorate degree holder in music education. She is the elected president of the Pan African Society for Musical Arts Education (PASMAE), founding director of the University of Zambia (UNZA) choir, Assistant Dean of Postgraduate Studies at the UNZA School of Education, and the Vice President of Africa Affairs in the Intercultural Music Initiative (IMI).
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Dr. Stephanie Shonekan
Dr. Stephanie Shonekan is an ethnomusicologist specializing in popular music of both Africa and the African diaspora, race and identity in music, and protest music. She is the newly appointed Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland after having served as the Senior Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri.
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Kevin C. Holt
Kevin C. Holt is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Stony Brook University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses focused on the music, culture, and sociomusical interventions of hip-hop. His research interests include American popular music and issues of race class & gender as they manifest in popular culture.
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Marvin McNeill
Marvin McNeill is an assistant professor at Emory University. After serving 20 years as a collegiate band director—most recently serving for sixteen years as the Associate Director and Chief Arranger for the “Pride of Connecticut,” the University of Connecticut Marching Band—McNeill attended Wesleyan as a PhD student to pursue and expand upon personal scholarly interests and passions.
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Andile Khumalo
Andile Khumalo is a senior lecturer in music theory, orchestration, and composition at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. His compositions are influenced by jazz, different African musics (e.g., the Amhara people, the Nguni people of South Africa, the Amadinda from Uganda), French spectralism, and more.
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Joel LaRue Smith
Joel LaRue Smith is a pianist, composer, arranger, and educator who seamlessly combines jazz, classical, and Afro-Latin music traditions. He has toured the world extensively and performed alongside artists such as Tito Puente, Ellis Marsalis, Kenny Burrell, Mario Bauza, Junior Cook, and Wayne Andre. Smith has served as Cultural Envoy to Central America for the US Embassy and Department of State.
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Videos
Recordings of the Speaker Series presentations.
