Afrofuturist Sound Ecologies is led by Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research Teaching Fellow Jadele McPherson and will explore Afrofuturist sound ecologies through innovative performance methods.
Working collaboratively with artists, students and scholars, they will explore ecology locally through Afro-Caribbean music and performance to study how sound can alter or shift environments. This project seeks to propose alternative epistemologies in studies of the Anthropocene that can be translated into effective, community-based pedagogies and practices.
Events & Scholarship
Mind, Body and Soul: Afrofuturist Sacred Sounds (Part 2)
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021, 4:00PM
On February 2nd Lucumí practitioners celebrated the Virgen de la Candelaria, syncretized with the orisa Oyá who symbolizes the wind, societal transformation, and owner of the marketplace. In Brazil, Candomblé practitioners celebrate Yemaya’s feast day. Yemaya and Oya are feminine orishas that represent cosmological counterpoints, death and maternity, in their embodiment of the black feminine divine in West African and diasporic epistemologies. The second part of our series will consider these feminine energies in Afro Atlantic spiritualities in tandem with the sonic and historic legacies of Quisqueya, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. We invited a
stellar group of artists and scholars Dr. Kyrah Malika Daniels, Maxine Montilus, Stephanie “Soli” Araujo, and Ayanna Legros and hosts Jadele McPherson and Joseph A. Torres-Gonzáles whose work expanded our conversation about Afro-Latinx artistry, ecology and wellness.
We dedicate this series to the spirit and memory of Miriam Jiménez Román whose pioneering work on Afro-Latinx intellectuals and artists in New York City continues to inspire new collaborations.
Mind, Body and Soul: Afrofuturist Sacred Sounds (Part 1)
Friday, December 4th, 2020, 4:00PM
“Mind, Body & Soul: Afrofuturist Sacred Sounds” explored embodied art practice during the COVID pandemic and rebellions nationwide protesting the police state, carceral practices which has resulted in a disproportionate loss of Black lives. Our series brought artist practitioners, healers, and activists together to create spaces in the absence of being able to engage in our past in-person collaborative processes. We collectively asked what promoted wellness and creativity during the pandemic, and considered the ways our work embodies the sacred and connects with environmental justice and other relevant themes. The series engaged a community of about 10-12 artists, activists, and cultural workers that highlight the work of Afro-Latinx creatives around the country.
Read series organizer and Teaching Fellow Jadele McPherson‘s own words on the first event of this new series:
“On the eve of December 4th Cubans who observe begin celebrating Santa Barbara-Changó, who represents music and social justice, with parties that have delicious food and sweets, live music and the power to elevate everyone’s spirits who attends. This year I will genuinely miss these parties since we cannot gather in large groups, and so the launch of this series will bring artists together through sacred sound by other means. We will channel that spiritual energy to make space and to discuss how we are keeping our emotional creativity alive and practicing wellness while living under the compounded duress of the pandemic. In this first installation of the series, join Beatrice Capote, Jennifer Celestin, Raymel Casamayor, and co-moderators Joseph Torres Gonzalez and myself as we invoke our ancestors voices, chat as if we were hanging out in someone’s living room, and share intimate, live performances that will inspire us to enter a New Year refreshed and fortified.”
Jadele McPherson is an artist-scholar whose research focuses on the intersections of sound and healing, mutual aid, and performance in Florida, Haiti and Cuba. McPherson is currently a PhD student in the CUNY Graduate Center Anthropology Department and teaching fellow with the Mellon Seminar for Collaborative Research and Engagement where she is researching how sound impacts wellness, climate change & environmental sustainability. As a founder of Lukumi Arts (2008), an experimental theatre company focused on Afro-Cuban arts, she wrote and produced La Sirene: Rutas de Azúcar which debuted at JACK (2016), in the HERE Arts SANCTUARY series, and Brown University’s Rites & Reason Theatre (2017). Jadele was an artist in the James Baldwin tribute Can I Get a Witness? at Harlem Stage co-created by director Charlotte Brathwaite and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, and No More Water/The Fire Next Time at the Park Ave Armory (February 2018). Jadele was also a featured guest on The Hoodoisie, a Chicago-based radical live news show (October 2018) and shortly after released her solo debut EP entitled “Peace & Quiet” (2019).