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MUSICS ABROAD
SPEAKER: Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Harvard University
This talk will discuss the experiences of Ethiopian musicians during the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, their forced migration abroad, and their roles in helping found new communities in the Ethiopian American diaspora. Based on decades of ethnographic observation and interviews in Ethiopia and in cities across North America as well as evidence from numerous songs, poetry, and proverbs, the book highlights the many artistic and social initiatives of these creative and mobile musicians. The book uses the expression "sentinel musicians" to designate a musician who has served his or her society with vigilance, drawing on heightened sensory powers of perception and an ability to shape sound. A neologism initiallyinspired by the official connections of musical sentinels with keeping watch and standing guard in both Ethiopian organizations such as the Imperial Bodyguard Orchestra and many other contexts in daily life, the paper introduces ways in which Ethiopian musicians have drawn on their musical prowess and sensory acuity to exercise cultural leadership and moral authority in service of new communities.
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, January 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.
How To Join
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If you have any questions, please contact Jonathan A. Gómez jgomez@g.harvard.edu.