CANCELED Weaponizing Flamenco: Roundtable Discussion This event has been canceled because of the winter storm in NYC. We are very sorry for any inconvenience. The March 23rd event has not been affected, so please join us then! March 22, as a part of Flamenco Festival NYC, the Foundation for Iberian Music will host a roundtable discussion at City Center. Weaponizing Flamenco: Embodied Voices for Social Change Contemporary flamenco artists are questioning stereotypes that tie flamenco to the past and are seeking an interdisciplinary dialogue with artists and cultural workers of other genres. Politics have entered the expressive palette of many young flamenco artists, including influential guitarist Juan José Suarez “El Paquete” and stunning vocalist Naike Ponce, whose new album is a lyric elegy to women. Please join these artists in a conversation with a panel of brilliant New York-based dance artists and scholars, including dance-maker Arielle Rosales, Tunisian protest singer-songwriter Emel Mathlouthi, and tap historian Constance Valis Hill, about making work attentive to the roar of battle and the stories of love and community that shake and wake audiences to envision a future of different possibilities. This round table, curated and moderated by K. Meira Goldberg and the Foundation for Iberian Music, will explore some of the intricacies of these issues. Afterward, why not join Naike and Paquete at Joe’s Pub, for their Flamenco Festival performance? For tickets and more information, visit the FF NYC event page. Admission: free 6:30 pm 22 March 2018 City Center, Studio 4 131 W 55th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues) New York, NY 10019
Pepe Habichuela at the Graduate Center As a part of Flamenco Festival NYC, on March 23rd, the Foundation for Iberian Music and the Graduate Center’s Live@365 will present Musical Dynasties: A Conversation with the Habichuela Clan. Flamenco is cultivated in musical legacies across generations. Join in a conversation with two scions of a legendary musical lineage who are also Grammy-nominated musical innovators: the renowned Pepe Habichuela, patriarch of the Habichuela family of guitarists from Granada, Spain, and his son Josemi Carmona, of Ketama and Barbería del Sur. Also joining, from another dynasty, is renowned Latin jazz artist Arturo O’Farrill. The artists will speak with K. Meira Goldberg, author of Flamenco on the Global Stage and Sonidos Negros, and scholar-in-residence at the Foundation. Admission: Free Reservations required. 7:00 pm 23 March 2018 Proshansky Auditorium The Graduate Center
US Premiere of Galician Bagpiper, Mercedes Peón On December 8, Mercedes Peón will perform at Elebash Recital Hall as a part of the Graduate Center’s Live@365 series. This is the US premiere of this award winning multi-instrumentalist. Peón is a master bagpiper, singer, and percussionist. She has collaborated with musicians such as Xosé Manuel Budino, Manu Chao and Carlos Núñez, and the Guardian has called her “one of the Spanish music scene’s true originals.” At her upcoming concert, “Ancient and Contemporary Songs of Galicia Spain,” she will perform both the traditional music of Galicia and her own original songs, based in this tradition. Tickets are $25, or FREE with a CUNY ID! CUNY students from any campus may email gcevents@gc.cuny.edu to reserve a ticket. Just present your ID at the door. Enjoy this preview of some of her original music, from a performance at the Musicport festival: Tickets: $25 7:00 pm, 7 December 2017 Elebash Recital Hall, the Graduate Center 365 Fifth Ave, NYC, 10016
Conference Announcement – The Body Questions: Celebrating the Tangled Roots of Flamenco The Body Questions: Celebrating the Tangled Roots of Flamenco An international conference to be held in New York at the Graduate Center, CUNY, by The Foundation of Iberian Music 15 – 16 October 2018 Conference home page The Body Questions: Celebrating the Tangled Roots of Flamenco is an international symposium to be held on October 16 at the CUNY Graduate Center exploring flamenco as embodying narratives of difference and Otherness. Conference details will be announced by spring, 2018. Before the symposium, on October 15 at the Fashion Institute of Technology, will be a showcase of flamenco artists of color whose work is on the forefront of the power of the body to question, to disrupt outmoded discourses of “authenticity,” and to work instead to relocate flamenco within a vibrant intersection of art as a celebration of diversity and agency against racism. The centerpiece of the day will be a screening of Miguel Ángel Rosales’s documentary Gurumbé: Canciones de tu memoria negra (2016)—a revelatory contribution to the contemporary discourse on race in Spain—along with a performance by Yinka Esi Graves, and a conversation of the artists with renowned dance historian Brenda Dixon Gottschild.
Conference: Transatlantic Rhythms in Music, Song, and Dance Natives, Africans, Roma, and Europeans: Transatlantic Rhythms in Music, Song, and Dance Indígenas, africanos, roma y europeos: Ritmos transatlánticos en música, canto y baile An international conference in Veracruz, Veracruz, México 11–13 Abril 2019 • Full Program • The Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center, partnering with the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music at the University of California Riverside, and the Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura in Veracruz will convene an international conference on the circulation of transatlantic rhythms. We encourage all scholars in the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, dance, theater, gender, race and ethnicity, diaspora, and immigration studies to submit proposals by spring of 2018. For more information about the conference theme, please see the Call for Papers. This our third conference in a series on transatlantic musical legacies, after 2017’s Transatlantic Malagueñas and Zapateados in Music, Song, and Dance at UC Riverside, and our inaugural conference at the Graduate Center in 2015, The Global Reach of the Fandango. (Selected papers are available from The Global Reach of the Fandango in English, from Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP), and in each paper’s original language, from Música oral del Sur. Selected papers from the UC Riverside zapateados conference are forthcoming in Spanish from Diagonal and in English from CSP.) View the program here. (Image: “El Fandangoe,” Samuel E. Chamberlain, 1847. In the collection of San Jacinto Museum of History.)
Gurumbé Screenings in NYC The date of our Gurumbé film screening and flamenco performance is rapidly approaching and tickets are selling fast. Get tickets here for this special event, December 3rd. Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories (Canciones de tu memoria negra) is a groundbreaking film that has been screening worldwide. It has been an official selection at more than ten US and international film festivals. Most recently, it screened at the Latin Cinema Festival in Minneapolis, and it is a part of the upcoming African Diaspora Film Festivals in Chicago and New York. Harvey Karten, the founder of New York Film Critics Online just reviewed the film, giving it four out of five stars. Our event at La Nacional is the first opportunity to meet and participate in a Q&A with the director, Miguel Ángel Rosales, dancer Yinka Esi Graves, and our host, K. Meira Goldberg, who will be moderating. In addition to our special screening event at La Nacional, there will be many additional opportunities to see Gurumbé in NYC. The film will run for one week at Cinema Village, December 1–7. It is also being screened at Columbia University on December 10th, in addition to numerous other university screenings in the northeast. Here is a full list of upcoming screenings: Howard University (Washington DC), Nov 27 Scribe Video Center (Philadelphia, PA), Nov 28 La Nacional (NY, NY), Dec 3 Smith College (Northampton, MA), Dec 5 Bryn Mawr College (Philadelphia, PA), Dec 6 The University of Chicago, Dec 8 Columbia University (NY, NY), Dec 10 Lastly, tickets are still available to see Yinka Esi Graves in a full dance program at Gibney Dance, November 30 – December 2. Watch Gurumbé‘s official Facebook page for up to date news and information on screenings, and of course, follow the Foundation on Facebook and on Twitter.
Civilizing the Monster: Romantic Longings in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” Friday, 8 December 2017, 5:30-7:30, at CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Martin Segal Theatre, 1st floor. Mary Shelley’s classic 1818 novel began as a late-night parlor game with her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, the poet Lord Byron, and Byron’s doctor John Polidori, centering on who could write the best horror tale. Since then, Shelley’s novel has been adapted to stage and film and has generated innumerable interpretations. The story of the scientist Victor Frankenstein and his ill-conceived effort to create a human-like monster has been read as a parable of science gone awry, a critique of Romanticism, a contribution to the tradition of “female gothic,” an autobiographical narrative of tormented creation (Mary’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft died giving birth to Mary), a Miltonic tale of “God-like” man, and as an allegory of overreaching industrial ambition. Mary Shelley’s mythic text will be discussed through its many interpretations and its distinct language and style, addressing its repercussion on several disciplines. Dreamlike and nightmarish scenarios, represented in works by Romantic composers from Schubert to Strauss, will be examined in connection with similar literary techniques in Frankenstein and in reference to the several attempts by the Creature to humanize and civilize himself. Prof. Nancy Yousef Professor of English at The Graduate Center and Baruch College, CUNY James Melo ERC Musicologist and Senior Editor at RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, CUNY Graduate Center FREE ADMISSION Presented by the Ensemble for the Romantic Century in partnership with the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, in connection with ERC theatrical concert, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For more information on ERC theatrical concerts, visit http:\\www.romanticcentury.org
New York Andalus Ensemble Winter Concert The New York Andalus Ensemble, in residence at the Foundation for Iberian Music, will be holding their winter concert with the full ensemble on December 13th. This year’s concert is in the intimate space of La Nacional. Tickets are $18, $15 student and senior, available through Event Brite. We recommend buying your tickets early! NYAE shows frequently sell out, at much larger venues. December 13, 7:30 pm La Nacional, 239 West 14th Street, NYC
Catalan Independence Roundtable The Bildner Center will be holding a roundtable discussion on the current Catalan Independence movement, at the Graduate Center on November 16. The panel will discuss the movement’s background and its prospects. The Foundation for Iberian Music’s director, Antoni Pizà, will be appearing on the discussion panel. Other panelists include José Miguel Martínez Torrejón (Chair, Hispanic Languages and Literatures, Queens College), Mary Ann Newman (Director, Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the US) and Jordi Graupera (Research Associate, Lichtenstein Institute on Self-Determination Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University). You may register for the event at bildner@gc.cuny.edu. Thursday, November 16, 6:30 PM Room C201/02 The Graduate Center, CUNY