Improv Notes: April 2014
|
Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser |
|
 IMprov Notes:News of the Moment April 2014 CCRMA TeleConcert Video at Stanford with Zhao Cong, Ellen Waterman, and Viv Corringham ORAL HISTORIES PROJECT Oral Histories is a showcase of interviews, performances, and articles by and about improvising musicians, artists, writers and scholars. This monthly feature offers an intimate look inside the minds and practices of some of the many dynamic, innovative people whose energy and ideas make improvisation studies such a vibrant field of inquiry. The Oral Histories project provides a space for improvising artists to be heard in their own words, often in dialogue with other improvisers, scholars, and practitioners. d'bi.young anitafrika:  d’bi.young anitafrika is a Jamaican-Canadian dub poet, monodramatist, educator, and Dora Award-winning actor and playwright. In this month’s Oral History we are gifted with an on stage interview with d'bi.young, and we get to witness the power of dub poetry in action by one of Canada’s most renowned dub poets. Dub poetry is a form of performance poetry with a West Indian aesthetic and origin. It evolved out of dub music comprised of spoken word pieces over reggae rhythms and Nyabinghi traditions (The Nyahbinghi Order is the oldest of all the Rastafari mansions and the term translates as “black victory”) in Jamaica beginning in the 1970s. d’bi.young thinks through dub vis-à-vis her own mother’s manuscript on dub, which identifies the four major elements of the then emerging form: music, language, politics, and performance (“r/evolution” 27). Dub, as such, bridges the personal and the political, and as d’bi developed her own understanding of dub she added four more elements for a total of eight: “urgency, sacredness, integrity, and self-knowledge. I then renamed the earlier elements of music, politics, and performance to rhythm, political content and context, and orality” (27). For d’bi.young, the principles of dub poetry—consisting of self-knowledge, orality, rhythm, political content and context, language, urgency, sacredness, and integrity—combine to comprise “a comprehensive eco-system of accountability and responsibility between my audiences and me” (27). As such, dub poetry has the power to connect disparate communities together—like a large multicultural dub mix—through lines of solidarity. Aside from being one of Canada’s first-rate dub poets, d’bi.young is also one of Canada’s original dub theatre practitioners, developing a genre of storytelling that she refers to as biomyth monodrama. d’bi.young explains that her “use of the term biomyth refers to the abbreviation of the words biography and mythology. I first encountered the term reading audre lorde’s zami, which she refers to as a biomythography […] biography-mythology or biomyth, therefore, is the poetic space between what we interpret as real and what we deem make-believe. monodrama is theatrical solo-performance work” (29). Many likely first encountered d’bi’s work in Trey Anthony’s da kink in my hair, which garnered her a Dora nomination for best actress, or perhaps on the television sitcom Lord Have Mercy!. Since then d’bi.young has performed 9 different dub theatre pieces: solitary, yagayah, androgyne, she, domestic, the sankofa trilogy (featuring the award winning monodramas blood.claat, benu, and word! sound! powah!), and nanny: maroon warrior queen. Aside from her prolific presence on the stage, along with the numerous books of poetry and music she has released, d’bi is concerned with giving back to the community through various outreach efforts, notably as the artistic director of YEMOYA, an international artist-residency based in Jamaica. In this month’s Oral History, Paul Watkins (ICASP GRA, writer, poet, DJ) sits down with d’bi.young for a live on stage interview at Paintbox Bistro in Toronto. They discuss dub poetry/music in relation to improvisation, the role of the storyteller, community, and rebel poetry/revolushin, among other diverse topics. Before the interview there was a DJ set by DJ Techné (Paul Watkins), and a performance from d'bi.young, both included below. ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW Full transcript available here.   ICASP GRA Brian Lefresne awarded the “The Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowship” at the University of Chicago.The award is to conduct research in the "Alton Abraham Collection of Sun Ra" which is housed in the Chicago Jazz Archive and is part of the University of Chicago's Special Collections Research Center. More details about the award can be viewed, here. LAST CALL: Summer Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation Memorial University of Newfoundland, June 29 to July 12, 2014 Intended for graduate students who have an interest in improvisation and its potential for dynamic forms of community building, the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation is offering a two-week intensive course to explore the theme of Improvisation as Practice-Based Research. The course will examine some of the ways in which improvisatory arts practices can be integrated with scholarly research agendas. How can academic research questions, methodologies, and outcomes benefit improvisatory creative practices and vice versa? In addition, the course will critically examine the changing institutional frameworks that support practice-based research in general and improvisation studies in particular. Application due before April 15th, 2014. Quote of the Month: Postdoctoral Fellowship Program 2014-2015 The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI)’s mandate is to create positive social change through the confluence of improvisational arts, innovative scholarship, and collaborative action. For the 2014-2015 academic year, we invite applications of postdoctoral researchers for two residential fellowships. One fellowship will be located at Memorial University of Newfoundland; the second fellowship will be located at the University of Guelph, McGill University, or the University of Regina. IICSI seeks to contribute to interdisciplinary research and graduate training in the emerging field of improvisation studies. Applications from researchers working in the principal research areas related to our project are encouraged: music, cultural studies, creative technologies, political studies, sociology and anthropology, English studies, theatre and performance studies, French studies, law, philosophy, and communications. Applications from different research areas are also welcomed, inasmuch as their research has a direct link with the social, cultural, or political implications of improvised arts practices. These postdoctoral fellowships provide stipendiary support to recent PhD graduates who are undertaking original research, publishing research findings, and developing and expanding personal research networks. Two twelve-month fellowships will be awarded for the 2014-2015 academic year, each valued at $38,000 CDN. Application Criteria Applicants are invited to submit a research proposal focusing on the social implications (broadly construed) of improvised artistic practices. Successful candidates will be chosen on the basis of a rigorous process of application, with IICSI's management team serving as the selection committee. Criteria for selection are the quality and originality of the proposed research, the fit with our project's overall mandate and objectives, the candidate's record of scholarly achievement, and his/her ability to benefit from the activities associated with the project. Postdoctoral fellows will be eligible for competitive research stipends, logistical assistance for relocation, office space equipped with state-of-the-art computers, access to the services of the host institution (library, etc), and administrative, placement, and research assistance as needed. In return, fellows are expected to pursue the research project submitted in their application, to participate in our project’s research activities (colloquia, seminars, institutes), and to present their work in progress in the context of our project’s seminars and workshops. Applicants should have completed a PhD at the time of application (to be conferred by November 1, 2014). Electronic applications are welcome, provided that original hard copies of transcripts and reference letters are submitted by mail by the postmark deadline. Notification for award: June 2014. Applicants must submit ALL of the following by the postmark deadline (April 30, 2014):
Send applications to: Dr. Ajay Heble For more information or to email applications, contact: Guelph’s portal for adventurous new sound events
Silence includes an ongoing concert series, occasional improvisation sessions, and handmade music nights and workshops. |
Artist of the Month:
|
Christopher Small, a New Zealand-born writer and musicologist, argued that music is above all an active ritual (rather than a thing) involving those who play and listen to it and only secondarily a matter of “black dots.” He is the author of four incredible books: Schoenberg (1978), Music of the Common Tongue (1987), Music, Society, Education (1996), and Musicking (1998). 
