Dear all,
Just a reminder that this Thursday’s EthNoise!, February 16 from 5:00–6:30pmCT, will be held on Zoom. We are honored to have Jessica present some ideas that she’s been working on and have a conversation with you all. We hope to see you there!
Dr. Jessica Swanston Baker
Assistant Professor, Music, University of Chicago
“ADHD/80HD: Initial Queries into Black Music and Neurodivergence”
Thursday, February 16 | 5:00–6:30pm CT
Held on Zoom
Dr. Jessica Swanston Baker is an ethnomusicologist who specializes in contemporary popular music of and in the Circum-Caribbean. Her research and critical interests include tempo and aesthetics, coloniality, decolonization, and race/gender and respectability. As a Caribbeanist, her work focuses on issues within Caribbean theory pertaining to small islands-nations such as representation and invisibility, vulnerability, and sovereignty. Her current ethnographic book project, The Aesthetics of Speed: Music and the Modern in St. Kitts and Nevis examines the relationship between tempo perception and gendered and raced legacies of colonization. Through historical and ethnographic analysis of polysemantic colloquialisms and music reception, she argues that colonial understandings of black femininity, and Enlightenment notions of musicianship frame local perceptions of wylers, a style of Kittitian-Nevisian popular music, as “too fast.”