“The Self and the City: Writing Detroit” with Prof. Mark Slobin

Mark Slobin, Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Emeritus at Wesleyan University, will present a lectured titled “The Self and the City: Writing Detroit” on Wednesday, November 8, 2017 from 3:30-4:45 p.m. in Music Room 1145. The talk is presented by both the Ethnomusicology Forum and the Music History and Theory Forum, and is a part of the Distinguished Lecturer Series. Admission is free and the event is open to the public.

Abstract

Taking off from my 2016 article in Ethnomusicology on the music of Detroit in the 1940s-60s, the talk will survey the approach and style of the forthcoming book, which blends personal and family accounts, oral history from interviewees, and archival sources to illuminate the musical life of America’s fourth-largest city, called “the capital of the twentieth century,” even as capitalism and racism were sowing the seeds of Detroit’s decline.

Mark Slobin is the Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Emeritus at Wesleyan University and the author or editor of books on Afghanistan and Central Asia, eastern European Jewish music, film music, and ethnomusicology theory, two of which have received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award: “Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World” and “Tenement Songs: Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants. His current project surveys the musical life of his hometown, Detroit, 1940s-60s. He has been President of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Society for Asian Music.

Professor Slobin has asked attendees to read his 2016 article “Improvising a Musical Metropolis: Detroit in the 1940s–1960s,” published in the journal Ethnomusicology prior to his talk.

For further details please contact Dr. Ruth Hellier-Tinoco at rhellier-tinoco@music.ucsb.edu.