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McKelvey School of Engineering

Brown School

Department of Music Lecture: Esther Kurtz, Felipe Guz Tinoco & Bryce Noe

Friday, October 28, 2022 | 3:00 PM

Music Classroom Building, 102
Music Classrooms Bldg, Clayton, MO 63105, USA

Esther Kurtz, Assistant Professor of Music, Washington University in St. Louis

Title
“A Movement Louder than Words: Capoeira Angola of Rural Bahia as a Refusal of Speech and Intelligibility” 

Abstract
Members of a capoeira group in the rural interior of Bahia, Brazil, claim their Afro-Brazilian music-movement practice of capoeira Angola as a powerful form of activism against white supremacy. However, in contrast to activist movements that make their protest legible to the Brazilian state and society through spoken and written discourse, these angoleiros (practitioners of capoeira Angola) claim that their sounding and moving, or “doing” of capoeira achieves more than the mere “speaking” of coastal activists and academic elites. Politically and geographically marginalized, the angoleiros argue that elites may know how to “speak well,” but fail to effectively combat racism and better the lives of Black people in Brazil’s underserved peripheries. Drawing on years of participatory ethnographic research with the group, in this paper I bring together frameworks from linguistic anthropology, postcolonial theory, and Black dance and performance studies to theorize the angoleiros’ sounding-embodied action as a privileged alternative to speech. Dominant raciolinguistic ideologies (Rosa 2019) in Brazil define “good speech” as the “standard Portuguese” spoken by educated white elites (Roth-Gordon 2017), while regional accent and slang mark Bahian speech as Black and subaltern. Indeed, university-based elites often state that poor, rural Black people “don’t know how to speak.” Hegemonic modes of listening thus deem Black subaltern speech unintelligible and inaudible (Spivak 1999). I argue that the angoleiros not only refuse the raciolinguisitic ideologies, but also deprivilege the realm of speech altogether. Rather than conforming to pressures to “speak well” in order to be heard and understood, the angoleiros assert the value of Afro-Brazilian ways of knowing through their movements and sounds. The group’s “corporeal orature” (DeFrantz 2004) thus remains unintelligible and inaudible to elites. However, crucially, their “doing” of capoeira also exceeds the aims of semiotics and communication altogether and enacts “otherwise possibilities” (Crawley 2016) that resonate in excess of white supremacy. Thus the paper argues for more expansive understandings of the ways in which African diasporic sound-movement practices can refuse intelligibility and originate alternative modes of political action.

Felipe Guz Tinoco, Doctoral student in musicology, Washington University in St. Louis

Title
“‘All the Colors Were Brazilian-Influenced’: Transnationalism and the Shaping of Jazz Fusion”

Abstract
(Ethno)musicologists have primarily researched jazz fusion as a U.S. phenomenon, focusing on the individual contributions of American bandleaders such as Miles Davis, Chick Corea, and Wayne Shorter, with few exceptions. Jazz fusion, however, coalesced U.S. genres, grooves, and timbres with those from numerous countries in South America, for example. As jazz flutist Herbie Mann once noted, “in all [jazz] fusion bands, the drummers slipped into a jazz-Brazilian groove almost automatically. It became almost matter of fact for every band to have a percussionist; but [sic] all the colors were Brazilian-influenced.” This paper considers jazz fusion as transnational and transcultural music. I theorize that transnationalism works as an intricate dimension in which musicians negotiate their unique artistic visions, often on uneven ground where race, gender, nationality, and political status predispose the musical culture. I consider Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira as a case study, whose style I argue shaped jazz fusion as a genre, as he brought Afro-Brazilian instruments and rhythms to groups like Miles Davis's, the Chick Corea Elektric band, and Weather Report. This paper engages with scholars across disciplines, such as Taylor Atkins, Étienne Balibar, Kevin Fellezs, Winfried Fluck, and Travis Jackson, and ultimately proposes a de-centralization of jazz scholarly inquiry with an eye toward cultural multiplicity.

Bryce Noe, Doctoral student in musicology, Washington University in St. Louis

Title
“Freestyle Skateboarding and Entrainment: Expressing Metric Layers through Tricks”

Abstract
Corporeally expressing music’s metric structure is a fundamental characteristic of freestyle skateboarding routines. In preparation for contests, freestyle skateboarders must choose a piece of music, choreograph a two-minute routine to that piece, spend many weeks or months practicing, and perform their choreographed routines in an arena with multiple judges and audience members. The process of internalizing and expressing meter, known as entrainment, requires the listener to coordinate between different layers of periodicity. In this paper, I argue that freestylers articulate a taxonomy of periodic layers—subdivision, tactus, and phrase—through particular classes of maneuvers. I will focus on the music selections and performances by Yuzuki Kawasaki and Mike Osterman—the highest-placed freestylers at the 2019 World Round-Up Freestyle Skateboarding Championships.

Event Type

Lectures & Presentations

Schools

Arts & Sciences

Topic

Humanities & Society

Website

https://artsci.wustl.edu/events/depar...

Event Contact

snarrenberg@wustl.edu

Speaker Information

Esther Viola Kurtz received her PhD in Ethnomusicology from Brown University (2018) and is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Music and a Faculty Affiliate with the Department of African and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Bridging music, sound, dance, and Africana studies in her research, Esther explores Afro-Brazilian music-movement practices as sites where practitioners negotiate relations of race, class, gender, belonging, and power. Her current book project is an ethnographic study exploring the racial politics of a capoeira Angola group in backland Bahia, Brazil. The project examines the implications of white participation in a deeply spiritual and political Afro-Brazilian practice, thereby complicating notions of cross-racial affinity facilitated through participatory African diasporic music-movement practices.

Felipe Guz Tinoco’s research interests center on jazz and transnationalism in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the music of the African diaspora generally. His dissertation examines issues of race and nationalism in Samba-Jazz and Música Instrumental Brasileira through postcolonial lenses. He is pursuing the American Cultural Studies Certificate and Teaching Citation at Washington University in St. Louis.

Bryce Noe studies choreography and sound in sport settings. In particular, he examines sporting spaces and events as sites whereby knowledge—both semantic and somatic—is transmitted sonically. Additional research interests include disability studies, popular music, and urban musicology. Prior to graduate study at Washington University in St. Louis, Bryce earned his Master of Music degree in Musicology at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. His master’s thesis, “Freestyle Soundscapes: An Acoustemology of Freestyle Skateboarding Contests,” is an exploration of freestyle skateboarders’ engagement with music and sound during contests as well as the (sub)cultural and gender politics embedded within such sporting spaces.

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