Afro-Sonic Mapping: Opening Talks

6 pm
Introduction
Anselm Franke, Paz Guevara

6.30 pm
The Migration of the Eternal Afro-Sonic Signifier
Satch Hoyt

Combining music, art and historical narratives, Satch Hoyt has developed a body of work based on the investigation of what he terms “The Migration of the Eternal Afro-Sonic Signifier”. Built on this research Hoyt will present the contemporary trajectories of this mnemonic network of sounds that continue to bond people of the transnational African Diaspora today. In his talk, he will draw attention to Afro-Sonic Mapping as his method to track oral histories and socio-political sensitivities that trace both the history of resistance and emancipation. Hoyt will present some of the experiences of his research journey and collaborations with musicians and authors of the Lusophone triangle across Luanda, Lisbon and Salvador da Bahia.

Redefining the Power
Kiluanji Kia Henda

Music as a popular bond has been a model for empowering resistance, revolution and new imaginaries. Encouraged by songs of protest affiliated with the liberation movement and the Cuban intervention in support of Angola’s independence in 1975, the artist Kiluanji Kia Henda has been developing a range of works that forge social change and historical consciousness. Using critical humour and irony, Kia Henda appropriates and intervenes in public spaces and transforms different representations of (post-)colonialism that form part of the collective memory. In his talk, Kia Henda will explore how the de-colonization of territory was made possible by the de-colonization of the ear intertwining insights of his artistic projects.

Undercurrents from Nubia
Jihan El-Tahri

The construction of the Aswan High Dam submerged ancient and modern Nubia, resulting in the forced dislocation of Egypt’s Black population. Since then Nubia, the land of the first known Egyptian pharaohs, can no longer be found on a map. Through her experimental sonic and filmic research, filmmaker and artist Jihan El-Tahri explores the uninterrupted lineage and cultural heritage of the Nubian people, kept alive through oral and musical transmissions. In her talk, El-Tahri will dig into this history, reflecting on the paradoxes of Egyptian President Nasser’s Pan-Africanism, the unitary fiction of Arab identity and the national discourse on modernity in Egypt. By sharing her recent recordings on the undercurrents from Nubia, El-Tahri will dive into the Nubian community’s sounds that defy erasure.

I Wonder As I Wander: The Nomadic Musicology of Don Cherry
Greg Tate

The trumpeter, cornetist and pocket trumpet player of free jazz, Don Cherry (1936–1995), released albums for which there was not yet a category. Cherry began adopting and merging different musical traditions from around the world in 1967 when he studied musical instruments at the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm and undertook extensive journeys in which he collected and mastered a range of instruments, notably including in his performances the “donso ngoni” from Mali (a harp-lute with a gourd body). Exploring how his expansive muse was fed by his movements across the globe and engagements with musicians outside the jazz world on their home ground, Greg Tate will unfold Cherry’s eclectic and nomadic musical cartography.