The UVA Department of Music is pleased to present a colloquium with Josh Brew on Friday, April 3rd at 3:30pm in Room 107 of Old Cabell Hall. This event is free to attend but has limited capacity due to classroom size.
Josh Brew is a scholar-performer dedicated to exploring music's imbrication with technology and sustainability. He is an Andrew Mellon Ph.D. candidate in Music and Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and a fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. Josh's creative and scholarly work emphasizes Black epistemologies conveyed through music and sound and focuses on participatory action with communities in West Africa and North America.
He has collaborated with musicians to address socio-economic career challenges and sustain musical traditions. Through fieldwork at small-scale mining sites in Ghana, Josh has witnessed the environmental devastation caused by gold mining activities. This research informs his current project, "Gifts from Nature," which responds to and presents a localized interpretation of the so-called Anthropocene from Africana and musicological perspectives. Some of Josh's writings appear in Ethnomusicology Forum, Riffs Journal, Rising Voices, as well as non-academic outlets like The Conversation and Songlines. As a composer and performer, he specializes in Afrobeats, Highlife, Jazz, Palm-wine music, and classical guitar. His recent ten-track album raises awareness of the global ecological crisis.
"Toward a Post-human Ethics of Musical and Ecological Sustainability"
How is music entangled in the politics of life and death in the so-called Anthropocene? I interrogate this question through the survival or extinction of musical traditions and/or ecological systems. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Ghana, I examine how community members sustain their musical traditions while navigating the capitalist and postcolonial pressures that drive the devastating ecological crisis of illegal gold mining (galamsey). My analysis is undergirded by Black-Indigenous epistemes of the "gift," where music, bodies, sound, and resources are offerings from a source beyond humans—"nature"—an entity possessing consciousness and agency that demands reciprocity. I ask: How can a post-humanist approach to music and the "gift" deepen our understanding of environmental challenges and point toward sustainable practices?
My talk will focus on Palm-wine music, a West African musical tradition that has shaped global Black musics like highlife and Afrobeats. Though currently considered endangered and receiving sustainability support, the genre's name, "palm-wine" (juice extracted from palm trees), encodes its ecological entanglements. Palm-wine is consumed and used for libations before making music and cutting trees; it affords generosity and reciprocal care between humans and non-humans. I examine these connections through the music's performance contexts, materiality, and sonic elements, and argue that music offers an effective medium for addressing the current global ecological crisis if allowed to exist first as a gift that resists extractive logics and fosters reciprocal care among humans and with non-humans. - Josh Brew
The Music Department Colloquium Series is free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Invited speakers have represented a broad range of backgrounds and interests. We have enjoyed visits by Ann Cooper Albright, Milton Babbitt, Scott Burnham, Mark Butler, Suzanne Cusick, Walter Frisch, Kyle Gann, John Gibson, Katherine Hagedorn, Berthold Hoeckner, Melissa Hui, Elisabeth Le Guin, Susan McClary, Louise Meintjes, Roger Parker, Lara Pellegrinelli, Douglas Irving Repetto, Deidre Sklar, Robynn Stilwell, Troika Ranch (a digital dance theater company), Dan Trueman, Gayle Wald, Kendall Walton, James Webster, and Deborah Wong, among many others.
Old Cabell Hall is located on the south end of UVA's historic lawn, directly opposite the Rotunda. For parking options, please visit our Directions and Parking page.
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For more information, contact the UVA Department of Music 434.924.3052 or music@virginia.edu.
All events are subject to change.