Music & Culture Lecture Series
Begun in 2002, MMaP鈥檚 Music & Culture Lecture Series presents cutting-edge research by leading scholars in ethnomusicology and allied disciplines. The talks, which are free and open to the public, take place in the MMaP Gallery on the second floor of the John C. Perlin Arts and Culture Centre. Since February 2017, all of the talks in the series have been livestreamed on the MMaP , and videos of can be viewed there as well.
2025鈥2026 Lecture Series
Sensational Journeys: Embodiment in the Time of Aura in Sikh Musical Worship
Inderjit N. Kaur (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
October 7, 2025, 7:30PM
Musical experiences often occur in an auratic context. This is especially true of musical worship. In these situations, aura plays a constitutive role in the bodily feelings and sensations of the engaged subject. Yet, the embodied aspects of auratic affect have not been extensively explored in musical ethnographies. In this talk, I follow the lead of Sikh devotees to focus on what they describe as transportive sensations during musical worship in heightened auratic milieus. Generated through a sense of historicity relating to the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib (1604|1704), and its musical features, the auratic affect circulates in Punjab, India, (the homeland of Sikhs), as well as globally in the diaspora. In this paper, I explore the thick event of musical worship at the famous Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) to investigate the constituent elements that create the conditions for the auratic and spatio-temporal experiences of congregants. Bringing Sikh epistemology into dialogue with an interdisciplinary set of scholarship, I draw attention to the corporeal processes at play for heightened sensations, what I call embodiment in the time of aura.
Blacksplaining Classical Music in the Twenty-First Century
Philip Ewell (Hunter College, City University of New York)
March 12, 2026, 7:30PM
鈥淏lacksplaining Classical Music in the Twenty-First Century鈥 gives an unvarnished black perspective on European classical music as it鈥檚 practiced in the United States and Canada. I鈥檓 black, I鈥檝e played the cello for over 50 years, and I鈥檓 a citizen of both countries, so I鈥檓 well equipped to give this perspective. Much has been made recently of the unrelenting whiteness of this music and, for even longer, its unrelenting maleness. Less prominent are classical music鈥檚 anti-Asianness, Christian roots, Germanism, pianism, and elitism. To top this all off, it鈥檚 worth pointing out that classical music is absolutely [insert expletive here] awesome!
In this talk I鈥檒l blacksplain鈥攜es, that means to explain from a black perspective鈥攖hese seemingly contradictory aspects of classical music. Ultimately, I argue that in order for us to move beyond the baked-in negative aspects of this music we must let go of some of its most intractable beliefs, like the belief that Johannes Brahms鈥檚 music is better than Nathaniel Dett鈥檚, that Igor Stravinsky鈥檚 music is better than Julia Perry鈥檚, or that classical music writ large is better than, say, bluegrass music. I call this 鈥渓etting go鈥 my musical re-education, and, notably, when I come back to classical music after having spent time away from it, I enjoy it even more than I did beforehand. This is not because it鈥檚 superior to other musics of the world, but precisely because it is not, which has been one of the most unexpected and exhilarating aspects of my work in reframing classical music. Won鈥檛 you join me?