Scot Brown is an associate professor of African American Studies/History at UCLA and serving as the 2016-17 fellow at the Center for Afroamerican Urban Studies and the Economy, Carnegie Mellon University.  He is the author of Fighting For Us as well as numerous articles on activism, music and popular culture.  Brown is editor of Discourse on Africana Studies and currently completing a book on 1970s bands from funk music hotbed, Dayton, Ohio. Brown has also served as commentator for many televised music documentaries on BET/Centric, TV One, and VH1.

Eric Moe, recently appointed Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, will give an inaugural lecture titled "Danger: Giant Frogs; Some Recent Music with Remarks by the Composer." Moe will discuss and perform compositions including Grande Étude Brillante and The Weasel of Melancholy. Percussionist Aaron Trant will perform Gong Tormented.

Roger Mathew Grant will present a paper titled “The Passions in Print: Musical Taxonomies and the First Death of Affect Theory.”

Postdoctoral Fellow Robert O. Beahrs will present a paper titled “Ideologies of Nomadism in Post-Soviet Tuva’s Traditional Music Scenes.” This paper, which flows from ten years of dissertation research, explores a theory of musical sensibility for understanding traditional music in Tuva, a republic in Russia’s south-central Siberian region.

Composer Mohammed Fairouz will talk about his composition, Sumeida’s Song, which will be performed by the Pittsburgh Opera on February 21, 24, 27, and March 1, 2015.

Recently appointed Composer-in-Residence at American Opera Projects, Laura Kaminsky is a composer with “an ear for the new and interesting” (New York Times), whose music is “full of fire as well as ice, written in an idiom that contrasts dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection.” (American Record Guide) 

We are proud to present an evening with the Pitt Jazz Ensemble featuring Master Drummer Carl Allen and Pittsburgh's own Jazz Master Dwayne Dolphin.

Tes Slominski will present a lecture titled “Doin’ Queer Time with Meg and Cris: Irony and Affect in Present-Day Reception of Women’s Music.”

Guthrie Ramsey will present a lecture titled “The Amazing Bud Powell: His Tests and Triumphs.” The presentation will comprise a reading from Guthrie's new book on Bud Powell followed by a discussion of jazz, Afromodernism and mental health, topics linked to the life and career of Bud Powell.

Louise Meintjes (Duke University) will give a lecture titled “The Crossing: World Music and Zulu Ngoma at Home.” Meintjes is Associate Professor of Music at Duke University. Her research focuses on the politics of music production, the intersection of song and dance, voice, the arts, and human rights.

Co-sponsored by African Studies Program