On Monday, April 17, 2023, at 6:00pm, join the Spring 2023 CLACS Colloquium for a colloquium event focused on the musical vaivén between Africa and Cuba. Dos Maravillas features Angolan writer Ondjaki, art historian Bárbaro Martinez Ruiz, and Puerto Rican-Colombian DJ / Producer Geko Jones. This colloquium event focuses on exchange between Cuba and Africa.
This event is open to the public with RSVP. Please RSVP for all events via Eventbrite: nyuvaiven.eventbrite.com
About Presenters
Born in 1977, Ondjaki is a writer from Angola. He has written poetry, children's books, short stories, novels, drama and film scripts. Ondjaki received his Doctorate in African Studies in Italy. To date (2022) his body of work includes six novels, seven collections of short stories, six collections of poetry and nine children's books. In 2013 he was awarded the José Saramago Prize for his novel Os Transparentes. In 2023 he was awarded the Vergilio Ferreira by Evora University.
Bárbaro Martinez-Ruiz earned his B.A from the University of Havana in 1994 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2004. He is an Art Historian with expertise in African and Caribbean artistic, visual and religious practices, whose work challenges traditional disciplinary boundaries and examines the varied understandings of – and engagement with – ‘art’ and ‘visual culture’. His books include Kongo Graphic Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign, Temple University Press, 2013 (English) and El Colegio de México, 2012 (Spanish); Faisal Abdu’Allah: On the Art of Dislocation, Atlantic Center of Modern Art Press, 2012 and Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and his Worlds, Yale University Press, 2007, for which he received the College Art Association Alfred H. Barr Award. In addition to his research and teaching, Martinez-Ruiz is an active curator, whose shows have explored issues of visual communication, dislocation and hybridity in the work of contemporary artists across the African diaspora. He is a 2022 recipient of a Creative Capital Award and recently curated the exhibition “El Pasado Mio/My Own Past: Afrodescendant Contributions to Cuban Art" at the Cooper Gallery at Harvard's Hutchins Center.
To DJ’s, party promoters, event producers and college professors across the U.S and Latin America, Geko Jones is a Puerto Rican-Colombian DJ / Producer pushing forward a well thought out agenda in the global bass arena. He was the co-founder and resident NYC's Que Bajo?! party and a founding member of the Dutty Artz music label and collective. He runs a speakeasy today that is dedicated to being a safe space for the afro-latino community to explore sensuality. He is a set designer and experiential producer that creates environments for people to have memorable experiences that offer them unique and memorable evenings of joy. His music and mixtapes span the tropical hemisphere, in which he collages together hours of globally sonic dance-floor theory and traces the roots of musical migrations between Africa and the Caribbean. Geko Jones has toured the U.S., Europe, and Latin America extensively. He has given talks on music at Bard, Vasser and Boston’s MIT campus. Today he joins us here at NYU.
About the Colloquium
Organized by faculty members Sybil Cooksey and Yunior Terry, the colloquium "Música de Vaivén: The Habanera Diaspora" pairs a graduate seminar with a public event series. Learn more.
Supporters
The Spring 2023 colloquium is organized by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and the Department of Music.
Additional sessions are made possible with support from the Center for Faculty Advancement, Gallatin Amplified Voices Series, Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora, La Maison Française, and Haitian Creole Language Institute of New York.
