In this program, the Raritan Players, led by Rebecca Cypess, explore music in private circles in 18th-century Philadelphia--especially in the salon of Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, hostess of the first literary salon in America.
Alessandra Ciucci presents her current project where she posits that in order to understand the effectiveness of the songs of Nass el Ghiwane it is critical to examine their musicopoetic assemblage with its rich web of citations and intertextual references, and to acknowledge the force of the band’s sound that Moroccans heard as “revolutionary” (thəuri) and with a “protest tone” (nəbraḥtjajiya).