Music Department Colloquium: Kay Kaufman Shelemay—Sentinel Musicians of the Ethiopian American Diaspora

Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at 4:30pm
Zoom

FREE! Reservation required.

This talk will introduce the background and scope of the author’s recent book, Sing and Sing On: Sentinel Musicians and the Making of the Ethiopian American Diaspora (University of Chicago Press, 2022). After explaining the concept of the sentinel musician, it will provide a brief overview of the book’s contents and its methodological and theoretical frameworks. A concise discussion of the central role of music in the Ethiopian American diaspora will follow, concluding with an overview of the lives, experience, and agency of three of its sentinel musicians. The presentation ends with important insights gleaned from this long- term ethnographic project.

Kay Kaufman Shelemay is the G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Shelemay has published numerous monographs, articles, editions, recordings, and the textbook Soundscapes: Exploring Music in a Changing World. Her most recent book is Sing and Sing On: Sentinel Musicians and the Making of the Ethiopian American Diaspora (University of Chicago Press, 2022). A past President of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Shelemay is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

The colloquium is organized by Assistant Professor of Music John Dankwa and Assistant Professor of Music and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Saida Daukeyeva as part of the Music Department Colloquium Series.