Join the Black Sound and the Archive Working Group on Wednesday, April 17 at 5:30pm in 106 Stoeckel Hall for a lecture by Professor Daphne A. Brooks, ”Rhapsody and Ruin: Porgy and Bess, Cultural Domination and the Story of America.” A reception will follow.
This lecture traces the sonic genealogy of Black women’s vocality in Porgy & Bess, and it pays close attention to the oft-overlooked and undertheorized historical, social, material and political landscape in which Gershwin and Heyward each cultivated their ideas about race, gender, class and culture, translating these concepts into America’s infamous “folk opera.” It looks to the archive to excavate the origins of racialized sound in their shared repertoire. Crucially, it also considers the counter performance politics and poetics of Black women musicians and artists who navigated the Porgy & Bess archive.
