Fall 2011
October 26
"Oh Say, Can You Really See?" Science Fiction, Sound Painting, and Social Subtext in Jimi Hendrix's "1983..."
Will Fulton, CUNY Graduate Center
Jefferson Williams Lounge, Brooklyn College Student Center
Jimi Hendrix's innovative use of recording technology in Electric Ladyland paved the way for a generation of sonic exploration in rock music. The album's programmatic suite "1983...(a Merman I Should Turn to Be)," which chronicles an escape from the dystopian earth's surface for a better life in Atlantis, was written and recorded weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968. In Hendrix's hands the recording process is itself an electro-acoustic performance of a work that represents both 1960s science fiction escapism and social commentary. Will Fulton is a doctoral student in musicology at the CUNY Graduate Center and teaches at Brooklyn College.
November 2
Our Modest Witness: John Cage's Modernism
Benjamin Piekut, Cornell University
Bedford Lounge, Brooklyn College Student Center
John Cage believed his music could, like nature itself, be governed by the laws of chance. Though chance might lead to unforeseen futures, as Cage's surrogate for the category of nature, chance was in fact a route toward certainty, and could provide him with a foundation on which to base the authority of his aesthetic position. This quest for certainty marks Cage as a modern figure, when "modern" is defined by the distinction between an objective, apolitical nature and a subjective, political society. Benjamin Piekut is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Cornell University.
November 9
Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival Book Launch
Presentation by Ray Allen
Live Old-time Mountain Music by the Dust Busters and John Cohen
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College
The New Lost City Ramblers were pioneers in the old-time music revival that paralleled the great folk music boom of the 1960s. In Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival, (University of Illinois Press, 2010), Ray Allen examines the Ramblers' efforts to recreate "authentic" old-time mountain music at a time when the folk music scene was dominated by commercial singers and political singer/songwriters. Allen holds a Tow Professorship at Brooklyn College where he teaches courses in American music and American studies. The Dust Busters are a (young) old-time string band based in Brooklyn, New York. They met while playing with folk music legends John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers and Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders. John Cohen is a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, a professor of art emeritus at SUNY Purchase, and a critically acclaimed photographer and documentary filmmaker.
