Arts Initiative Virtual Series: Global Music Today

Our panelists, Marié Abe, Michael Birenbaum Quintero, and Brian Keigher, will discuss what is global music and its place in culture, plus they'll share what's new and hot for you to check out and how you can broaden your playlists with some outstanding music.

Participants will also have a chance to ask questions and share their favorite global music artists.

Once you've registered through Eventbrite, please keep an eye out for an email from us through Eventbrite with the Zoom link and information to attend virtually within 24 hours of the event. If you RSVP within 24 hours, you will receive the link on Monday throughout the day.

For more information about the virtual series, please visit: bu.edu/arts/virtual-arts.

Panelists:

Marié Abe is the Artistic Director of the award winning BU Global Music Festival, Associate Professor of Music in the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, and an affiliated faculty at the African Studies Center and American and New England Studies Program at Boston University. Her recent book, Resonances of Chindon-ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), is an ethnographic exploration of the politics of space and sound, affect, and Japanese popular performing arts. Other research interests include cultural advocacy, ritual music in Bali and Thailand, the accordion and immigrant communities in California, anti-nuclear movement and music in Japan, anti-U.S. military movement and music in Okinawa, and afro-futurism in the United States.

Michael Birenbaum Quintero is an Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Boston University. His research focuses on the music of the black inhabitants of Colombia’s Pacific coast region.His book, Rites, Rights and Rhythms: A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia’s Black Pacific (Oxford University Press, 2019), examines the feedback, interference, and overlap between different experiences of currulao music – as ritual sonority (“rites”), political resource (“rights”) and popular music (“rhythms”) – by tracking their historical emergence, development, and maintenance or abandonment as systems of meaning that frame musical sound at the present-day conjuncture of neoliberalism, cultural mobilization, and civil war in Colombia. His work uses both fieldwork and historical methods to examine music as emerging from people’s sonic practices, as having real-world ramifications, and as being available to being interpreted in divergent ways.

Brian Keigher is a producer of the award winning BU Global Music Festival and the Artistic Director of the World Music Institute (NYC). Keigher has worked in the performing arts and marketing industries for over two decades. Serving the Chicago public for nearly a decade as Senior Public Programs Manager for the city of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs where he organized and produced music events and festivals including Chicago SummerDance, World Music Festival, Ohm Multimedia Series, DJs in the Park and hundreds of other events annually at the Chicago Cultural Center, Millennium Park, Daley Plaza, Grant Park, museums, clubs, parks and civic centers. He has served as a grant panelist, jury member, guest curator and guest speaker for organizations and music festivals from around the world. He is also the co-founder and co-curator for the all-night Indian classical music concert showcase, Ragamala which is a signature event as part of the Chicago World Music Festival annually.