Thursday, April 8, 2021
Live via Zoom at 7:00 pm
This event is free and open to the public.
Join Stanley Sheldon, incomparable bass guitar player best known for his work with the acclaimed British rock star Peter Frampton and notable as an early adopter of the fretless bass for rock music, who will discuss his studies on nineteenth-century slave society in Latin American countries and how its influence on past music continues to affect the transformation and the hybridization of world music today. The evening’s moderator is Iani Moreno, associate professor, World Languages & Cultural Studies Department, Suffolk University.
Drawing on his Latin American Studies, Sheldon will discuss the colonial Caribbean American slave trade, which gave rise to flourishing societies made up of escaped slaves who had fled the harsh conditions endured in the sugar plantations. A strong correlation between regionally specific intensive sugar production and Afro-Caribbean art can be observed in all the major regions where enslaved people were brought to work. Afro-Caribbean music and dance evolved not only in and around the plantations but also in more remote mountainous regions of the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, Cimarron culture is regarded as a “culture of the drum,” bearing a striking resemblance to the aboriginal African rhythms but nonetheless uniquely Afro-American. Afro-Caribbean music is not only important as an integrating, democratic force, it also at times displays a voice’ challenging and defying hegemony.
For their bios, click their names.
