Colloquium Series: T. Carlis Roberts & Tao Leigh Goffe
Add To Calendar
Register here for the Zoom link: https://bit.ly/3vyBXvV
Facebook event page: https://fb.me/e/4YLbrn1kE
T. Carlis Roberts - A Charge to Keep: Song, Spirit, Speculation
I will speak about the Spiritual Technologies Project, a research and performance consortium I co-founded to explore the metaphysical dimensions of African diasporic music. In particular, I will discuss the multi-sited and multimedia endeavor, A Charge to Keep, which explores the waning tradition of metered hymn singing in Southern black churches. Using video and music examples, I will open a window onto how the metered hymn tradition lives in the 21st century, explore issues that arise when conducting collaborative research, and propose what it means to consider the research space as one of speculation rather than simply documentation.
T. Carlis Roberts (he/they) is a scholar and artist who engages sound as a tool for human transformation and liberation. He is currently Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley and teaches courses on the politics of music in the Americas. T’s published research focuses on the racialization of music and the musicalization of race, queer and trans musical histories, and spiritual technologies in African diasporic practices. Creative facets of this work (composition, sound design, performance) have been featured in arts industry periodicals, presented at national theaters and music venues, included in film and television scores, and nominated for a Grammy in 2020.
Tao Leigh Goffe - Bigger than the Sound: Race, Reverberation, Remix
As a global cultural export, reggae has reverberated from Jamaica outward to the world for the past seventy years. In this presentation I make a sonic argument about the genesis of reggae as a new sound born of triangulation and media technologies including the radio and soundsystem in the 1950s. Looking to the dancehall as a space where race, class, gender, and sexuality are reinforced and undone, I consider the generative friction of reggae. Tracing the conditions of possibility of the soundtrack to modern Jamaican life, I center the infrastructure, capital, and distribution are required to amplify from "a small place."
Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer and a DJ specializing in the narratives that emerge from histories of race, debt, ecology, and technology. She received her Bachelor's degree from Princeton University and PhD from Yale University. Dr. Goffe is an assistant professor of literary theory and cultural history at Cornell University. Her research is rooted in decolonial thought, literature, and theories of labor that center Black feminism’s engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations.
All Colloquium events are free and open to the public.