Musical Pan-Africanisms

Undergraduate

This seminar surveys the musical conversation that has circulated around the “Black Atlantic” cultural sphere (sub-Saharan Africa, Afro-America, the Afro-Caribbean, and Latin America) for most of the twentieth century, facilitated by the advent of sound recording and broadcast technologies at the beginning of the twentieth century, and articulated through discourses of black cultural connection and concrete histories of trans-Atlantic encounter. Many –though not all– of the readings focus on the decades immediately following World War II, when “Pan-Africanism” was an explicit and prominent political discourse. Others address earlier or later eras when the idea of cross-cultural connection was more implicit but equally influential. We trace the unfolding of this conversation through a variety of sources: scholarly, personal (i.e. biographies/autobiographies), journalistic, and, of course, sonic. Specific musical artists discussed include Bob Marley, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Arsenio Rodriguez, Laba Sosseh, Orchestra Baobab, Johnny Pacheco, Manu Dibango, Randy Weston, James Brown, Manu Dibango, and others. Scholars we will read include Paul Gilroy, Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Robin Hayes, Richard Shain, Steven Feld, Robin D.G. Kelley, Gwen Ansell, and others. WR , HU Th 1:30pm-3:25pm