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Exploring Black Rest in Black Music
March 6 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Center for Black Visual Culture
A continuation of the Black Rest Project at the Center for Black Visual Culture, we present the Rest in Black Music Panel! Featuring Jake Goldbas, Dr. Fredara Hadley, Rich Medina, and Dr. Mark Anthony Neal moderated by Dr. Kwami Coleman, this panel interrogates the critical role Black music plays in facilitating the act of rest for Black bodies, and will explore how “the rest” and “the break” in music function as facilitators of reprieve and revival.
Please join us at 20 Cooper Square, Room 101 for an insightful discussion with our distinguished panel of musicians, artists and scholars. Whether you’re already familiar or just curious, this event will leave you with a new appreciation for the power of Black music and the act of rest as a resistant and liberatory practice. We look forward to seeing you!
Date: March 6th, 2024
Time: 6:30pm EST
Location: 20 Cooper Square, Room 101, New York, NY 10003
Speakers Bios
Dr. Fredara Mareva Hadley is an ethnomusicology professor at Juilliard in the music history department. Hadley teaches courses on jazz history, African American music, and ethnomusicology. Her research centers on the diverse musical legacies and impact of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Hadley’s other area of research focuses on Shirley Graham DuBois and the influence of musical pan-Africanism in her opera Tom Tom (1932) and her ongoing political engagement.
Rich Medina is an elite DJ, platinum selling record producer, recording artist, poet, journalist, curator, and educator. Via Jump-N-Funk, North America’s original Fela Kuti tribute, Rich provided a blueprint for the world’s newfound interest in Afrobeat, which stands without peer to this day. As an educator, Medina has lectured at TEDxPhilly and at his alma mater Cornell University, amongst numerous others. As a music producer, he’s collaborated with a range of artists, including Jill Scott, J Dilla, Bobbito Garcia and Phil Asher.
Dr. Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African & African American Studies. Neal is the author of six books including the recently published Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive (2022), What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Public Culture among others. Neal has been featured in several documentaries including PBS’s Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Netflix’s The Two Killings of Sam Cooke, and A&E’s Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution.
Dr. Kwami Coleman is an assistant professor of music at the Gallatin School of New York University. A musician, composer, producer, and musicologist specializing in improvised music, Coleman has published research on topics in experimental and black music history, music aesthetics, technology, and vernacular music cultures. His forthcoming book, Change: The “New Thing” and Modern Jazz, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2025.