Event

A altas e inteligibles voces: Sounds of Blackness in the Christmas Feast in New Spain

Colloquium Lecture by Ireri Chávez-Bárcenas

November 12, 2024 (Tuesday) — 5:15 PM to 7:00 PM

Lerner Center 101
Penn Music Building
201 S. 34th Street, Room 101

This talk traces the performance of Blackness in Christmas villancicos from Puebla de los Ángeles in the early 1600s. By situating this polyphonic genre within the listening experiences of the growing Afro-diasporic population in New Spain, the presentation reveals defiant voices and expressions of collective identity and the persistent efforts to silence them.

BIO

Ireri Chávez-Bárcenas is Assistant Professor of Music at Bowdoin College. She holds a doctoral degree in musicology from Princeton University and a master’s degree in religion and music from Yale University. Her book project Singing in the City of the Angels: Race, Identity, and Devotion in New Spain received the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend Award and was selected for the RaceB4Race First Book Institute. Her current work focuses on the performance of villancicos within the institutional and social fabric of Puebla de los Ángeles and develops a new methodology for the study of function, meaning, and transmission of the vernacular song tradition in the Spanish empire. She has published journal articles and essays on the intersection of villancicos and early modern ideas of race, religion, and identity in New Spain, and the adaptation of conflicting historiographical interpretations of the conquest of Mexico in Vivaldi's opera Motezuma.

ATTENDANCE & REGISTRATION

This event is free and open to the public. If you attend in person, there is no need to register. We ask that you join us in person if at all possible, but for those of you who are unable to physically attend we encourage you to participate via Zoom. Please use the link to attend virtually.

ABOUT COLLOQUIUM

This lecture is part of the 2024-25 Penn Music Colloquium Series. The Department of Music's main Colloquium Series showcases new research by leading scholars in music and sound studies and composers both in the United States and internationally.  All Music Colloquia will take place in Room 101 of the Lerner Center on Tuesdays at 5:15 PM.