Friends, colleagues, and readers: Happy New Year! We’ll be back with more article content the week of January 14, but we wanted to take a minute to encourage you to make space on your calendars for an exciting performance announcement featuring our leader, Dr. Guy, and the MusiQology band alongside an exciting constellation of artists. The group will take their places at the community institution Harlem Stage performing arts center in Upper Manhattan on Saturday, March 9, at 7:30PM, performing Dr. Ramsey’s acclaimed multimedia performance piece Hide/Melt/Ghost.
To purchase tickets or get more information about the performance, click here.
Drawn both directly and inspirationally from his forthcoming book Soundproof: Black Music, Magic and Racial Intimacies, Hide/Melt/Ghost explores the social bonds and community values of black music in antebellum America, blurring the lines between past and present through media and song. With a particular focus on the paranormal practice of enslaved Africans, the event—which is profoundly enveloping to experience in person—blurs historical and critical lines. “Black music is a powerful cultural transaction with magical qualities; it can occupy the past, present and future,” Guy says.
This will be the first New York performance of Hide/Melt/Ghost, which functioned as the University of Pennsylvania Provost’s Lecture on Diversity in February 2018. In a Q&A at the time, Dr. Guy explained the musical intersections of secrecy (“hide,” in the title), assimilation (“melt,” a la the melting pot) and the supernatural (of course, “ghost”). It has been performed around Philadelphia a number of times in 2018, during which the MusiQology band and performers—which in the past have featured Ursula Rucker, V. Shayne Frederick, and others alongside MusiQ Department artists Bridget Ramsey and Vince Anthony—exult in its complexity, a multi-layered retelling of African-American and Afrodiasporic history through unforgettable sonics.
We encourage you—sincerely—to save the date!
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