Talk: “Blue Abstractions: The Cognitive, Social and Sonic Dissonances of Bud Powell” by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.

• Event Date: Thursday, March 31, 2016
• Time: 4:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

Bud Powell (1924-66) was a legendary jazz pianist who was one of the architects of bebop, a style of modern jazz that emerged in the 1940s. This talk discusses Powell with respect to his experiences in the mental health system, the music industry and idiosyncrasies of his musical rhetoric.

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. is the author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (2003) and the forthcoming In Walked Bud: Earl “Bud” Powell and the Modern Jazz Challenge. He received his doctorate in musicology from the University of Michigan and taught at Tufts University before joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1998. He is also an accomplished pianist, composer and arranger, with numerous releases on CD including The Colored Waiting Room (2012) with his Philadelphia-based band, Dr. Guy’s MusiQology.

Professor Ramsey’s blog, Musiqology.com (external link), is read around the world and boasts more than 65,000 views.

Part of the CAS Initiative on Dissonance: Music and Globalization since Edison’s Phonograph which examines the many ways in which globalization has reshaped musical life since the late nineteenth century, including the growth of the phonograph industry, the migration of musicians, and the transformation of performance practices. Dissonance, chosen as a key concept, is a challenging feature of some non-Western music to Western ears; the term also links changes in the meaning of music to social, cultural and political conflict. In the Western context, the “emancipation of dissonance” absorbed political meanings that were widely recognized by the time of the Weimar Republic. This initiative will primarily bring together historians and musicologists, but it will also encourage contributions from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

This Center for Advanced Study event is cosponsored by the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center, Department of African American Studies, Department of History, and the Division of Musicology.